INTRODUCTION

Over the millennia the search for meaning and belonging has been humankind’s most fervent pursuit, and to that end religions and philosophies abound. Yet, in our time, many people feel alienated from all religion and philosophy, sensing them to be based in superstition, dogma, or hierarchies of power. The need for meaning and belonging remains the same, yet the traditional options for fulfilling that need have less and less appeal. In desperation, we have turned to consumerism, technology, and celebrity voyeurism as our new religions, and these, too, have proven unsatisfying. The modern world, for many, has become a soulless place.

Out of this disappointment comes a large and growing interest in finding meaning that is not based in beliefs or traditions, but instead relies purely on direct experience. Many people sense the spiritual, the mysterious breath of existence. Yet, though they sense the mysterious, they remain grounded in reason. Rational mystics, I call them. It may seem to such people that they are alone in their view, that they are not fit for either religion or the marketplace. They may feel that they are not fit for this world at all.

I know well the loneliness that comes when one no longer feels part of a spiritual tradition yet is wary of a purely mechanistic or biologically determined view of life. Some years ago I experienced an existential depression that lasted several years and fostered a cynical view of reality. Having previously been on a spiritual journey since the early seventies, I had studied with renowned teachers in Asia and the West and had immersed myself in a worldwide community of meditation practitioners, primarily in the Buddhist traditions. In addition to rigorous meditation practice, we studied what in Sanskrit is called the dharma, which loosely translates as "truth" or "the way." For over a decade I had also worked as a journalist specializing in consciousness and activism in order to have access to and, in a sense, private tutorials with some of the great spiritual leaders and thinkers of our time. These were heady years of feeling part of a growing spiritual movement.

But there came a point when none of it made sense anymore. All religious beliefs began to fall away and seem nothing more than fairy tales attempting to assuage anxiety about the purposelessness of existence and the fear of death. This falling away of beliefs occurred completely on its own and was the last thing I would have wished. After all, it is very comforting to have a nice coherent story about the purpose of life and a belief in the hereafter. Instead, I plummeted into a vision of reality that was pointless and heartless. Having long since seen the futility of finding peace in the pursuit of power or money, and, now, set adrift from any connection to dharma, I felt a stranger to every world. I no longer spoke the language of my oldest and dearest friends, and a cold desolation engulfed me.

The silver lining of the cloud of depression is that it sometimes opens us to fresh perspective. When our strategies have failed and we have found no consolation in any quarter, we can either fall into madness or into realizing that what we have always wanted—a passionate aliveness at peace in itself—is, strangely enough, found in a simple shift in perception.

In my case, meeting my teacher, the late H. W. L. Poonjaji of India, awoke in me a clarity that objectively viewed the story of my depression and pierced through it to underlying peace, dissolving the depression along the way. Poonjaji exhibited a possibility of living in the quiet center of one’s being while remaining fully engaged in activity. His was a passionate expression of life, devouring its delights while remaining aware of its tragedies. Nevertheless, one sensed in him a silence that the world did not touch.

Despite my many years of meditation practice, I had never experienced silence in an ongoing way. I had tried to come to silence through techniques of taming the mind, and that had been futile. Yet now all effort to still the mind fell away and my attention began to effortlessly rest in the silence beyond thought. Crazy thoughts continued, but interest in them lessened. Movements of mind, emotion, fear, or elation became as waves on an ocean of peace. An acclimatizing process began to occur on its own. Just as mountain climbers, when approaching a high altitude, must spend time camped at points along the way with no particular task other than to let their bodies adjust to the new altitude, I could feel my awareness adjusting to silence while doing nothing to assist it. The silence did all the work, just as being at the higher altitude does the acclimatizing work for the climbers.

Within this silence, I also began to feel a pervading presence in everything, and a feeling of love overwhelmed me. I realized that I had always felt intrinsic presence and love on the periphery of my awareness; it was completely familiar. Pure presence is our fundamental experience, even when we seem to be lost in the stories and activities of life. Like breathing, it is taken for granted. Yet it is what we most clearly remember when we think back to the earliest times of our existence. The details of our past may be fuzzy, but being itself is clear. At the ages of four, ten, twenty, or ninety, what has or will most consistently define our experience is the simple fact of being and, if we go deeper, a feeling of love.

I remembered this feeling from my earliest days with my Italian grandmother, Caterina Versace, who died when I was seven and who had been like a mother to me. We would silently walk among the blue hydrangeas in her yard, and everything inside and out appeared to be glowing and shimmering. This all seemed perfectly normal at the time.

But, as I grew older, I somehow lost the sense of it. Although the awareness of simple presence and love was there all along, I overlooked it by searching for meaning and purpose and promises of life ever after. On meeting Poonjaji, the search fell away and in its place an appreciation for mystery and an awakened awareness emerged. I was overcome by the sensation of underlying unity. Everything was in its place—just so.

This understanding conveys a sense of belonging. I recognized that we are not merely interconnected; we are suffused with the same essence as that of everything. Steeping in this sense, we no longer spend our time clutching to what is turning to dust or chasing abstract ideas, such as meaning and purpose. We walk in a sense of totality; the world being entirely our own. It is not that we possess it but that we are it. Like water into water.

There is a story about a little fish who swims up to his older and wiser fish friend and says, "You go on and on about water. I have been searching for it everywhere and it is nowhere to be found. I have studied all the texts, practiced and trained diligently, and met with those who have known it, but it has eluded me." The wise old fish says, "Yes, dear. As I always tell you, not only are you swimming in it right now but you are also composed of it." The little fish shakes his head in frustration and swims away, saying, "Maybe someday I will find it."

We are so like the little fish. We search everywhere outside ourselves to try to find ourselves. We collect experiences, relationships, knowledge, and objects. We hope for recognition from others to validate our importance. But while we may have found pleasure or rewards in various ways, we have often overlooked our greatest gift, hidden in plain sight—our own passionate presence. We overlook this gift because we are so busy searching elsewhere for something more. As long as we depend on an enhanced sense of ourselves to be happy we are likely to be disappointed. Telling ourselves stories about what is missing forces us into a relentless pursuit of desires akin, as Poonjaji would say, to beasts of burden driven by a madman. Happiness comes in relaxed simplicity, living in present awareness, and contentment with this life that is granted.

Because it is simply what is so, this view comes effortlessly in deep relaxation. When striving is exhausted (usually through disappointment) and we no longer hope for anything outside ourselves to make us feel whole, we may begin to notice a startling quality of aliveness—how fulfilling it is just to be—and this sense of being infinitely extends and includes all of existence.

Usually people associate a sense of unbounded presence with epiphanies in life—being present at a birth, or a death. People lose themselves in sexual union, in nature, or in the presence of heart-wrenching beauty. In those moments they forget to keep up the story about the one having an experience, and all that is left is the actual experience of presence. Yet peak experiences are only portals to our true nature, which is already occurring completely on its own.

What is known as realization is merely feeling this immaculate presence here and now, realizing or being fully cognizant of the ordinary miracle of just being. This needs no attainment since it is already occurring. It requires no special circumstances, no life epiphanies, no meritorious preparations. It is fully present each moment of our lives. It stays fresh and innocent despite our sorrows, regrets, and whatever damage or failures we feel we have sustained. No suffering or transgressions have marred it, just as no exalted deeds have enhanced it. Countless thoughts and experiences have come and gone, and none of them have adhered.

Though meeting a teacher facilitated this awakening for me, it is not always necessary. In fact, awakened awareness is not dependent on any particular circumstance. We are each endowed with clear perception that becomes dormant or obscured through the conditioning of fear, loss, and belief. When we deeply relax in silence, our awareness effortlessly shines with a transforming brilliance. We live as sensible and practical people, but with a twinkle in our eyes. We go about our business as usual—answering phones, taking care of children, riding the subway—and we enjoy a quiet sense of presence through it all. Aware that we are living in a grand mystery, feeling the radiance of its presence everywhere, we also take care of the tasks at hand.

I began sharing these understandings in 1992, initially at the invitation of Ram Dass, spiritual teacher and author of the classic Be Here Now. Since that time I have traveled extensively, conducting public evening events in the U.S. and Europe. These gatherings, called Dharma Dialogues, are interactive discussions alternating with periods of quiet. The dialogue’s purpose is to bring one’s attention to present awareness and see through the mind’s habitual ways of trying to squirm out of it. Each night is different, a kind of improvisational Socratic conversation that eventually leads, in almost each case, to silence.

In addition to Dharma Dialogues, I have also led many silent residential retreats. It is in the retreats, when people are simply quiet and free to float in the deep waters of their being, that I have noticed the emergence of a surprisingly consistent intelligence. This intelligence is cross-cultural and transcends biological abilities and educational backgrounds. People who may not have been considered intellectually gifted experience this intelligence as do people who have had little education. It could be thought of as an intelligence of the heart because it seeks harmony and the equilibrium of goodness. I call it awakened awareness because it is innate and suddenly just wakes up. It is this awareness or intelligence we refer to when we say we are in our "right minds." We might add that awakened awareness is when we are in our right hearts as well. When we are in our right minds and hearts, we are instinctively loving, generous, and clear.

For years I had been reflecting on the universal nature of this awareness. I had noticed, especially in retreats, that people in the daily group sessions would speak in almost mystical poetry to describe the ordinary events of their days. I realized that what we now call mystical works of poetry from former eras were simply descriptions of reality by people of those times, such as Rumi or Hafiz of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. They weren’t trying to be poetic. They were describing feelings and life as they literally experienced them. They were reporting from the field of awakened awareness.

In retreat, I began to notice similar descriptions spoken by people who had never been exposed to these ideas. I have often been startled to hear perceptions and feelings described in nearly exact language by, for example, a person who lives in rural Scotland and one who lives in Hawaii. I realized that this intelligence crosses time as well, that the awakened awareness of the Buddha, Christ, or Rumi is not distinctly different from that of our own. People over the centuries have stumbled upon this inherent intelligence in countless ways and expressed it in art, poetry, music, science, and even religion.

My attention began to reflect on and marvel at the similar expressions I observed in people who exhibited awakened awareness. It became a secret hobby of mine to notice these similarities wherever I traveled in the world. One night I awoke from a dream in which I had identified seven primary qualities that naturally and consistently emerge in awakened awareness. I got out of bed, wrote them down, and went back to sleep. The next morning I looked at what I had written and saw the basis for this book.

The seven qualities—Silence, Tenderness, Embodiment, Genuineness, Discernment, Delight, and Wonder—are familiar to everyone. Yet we often overlook them in our pursuit of worldly things or spiritual advancement. In awakened awareness, however, these qualities are our daily company, our best friends. They come from our own innate wisdom and guide us better than any philosophy ever has.

This book is therefore simply a reminder of what you already know in your heart of hearts, in your own awakened awareness. Someone who recently read the manuscript said that during the reading she often found herself thinking, "Yes, absolutely right, but how do we get there?" The irony is that in the moment of saying, "Yes, absolutely right . . ." she was in awakened awareness itself. It is your own awakened awareness that recognizes truth. You don’t have to strain to find it or strive to intellectually hold onto it. Insight is best metabolized fresh. There is no need to remember anything for later. If you try to grasp it, you end up with dogma. If you relax into the quiet center of your being, your own awareness will notice every wink of the mystery that comes your way.

silence

She had been on the quest for so long that the reasons for it were no longer clear to her. She was just moving, step after step, too tired to think. Having recently fallen down a slippery bank into a thicket, she was bruised and scratched, her daring leaps of former times now too difficult to execute. Seeing a river in the distance, she made her way there to get a drink and wash her wounds. Afterward she lay under a nearby tree thinking that if she could just get some rest, she would be able to renew her journey with invigorated determination. After all, the quest was important. The quest was all there was.

She was about to drift off to sleep when she noticed an old woman sitting on the riverbank nearby. The woman, who had been gazing at the water, turned and silently gestured to her, opening her arms with palms outward as if to say, "Just this."

Yes, just this, the woman thought as she fell into a deep sleep.

When she awoke several hours later, evening had fallen and the old woman was gone. Getting up, she realized that something was very different. The stars were now shining pinpoints within her being, their light no longer traveling from a distance but encompassed by her awareness as glowing prisms within the vast regions of herself. The river and its sound, the trees and their smell—all now existed in a sweeping whole, a multidimensional canvas of color, forms, and sensations. She realized in a flash that it had always been so.

Her restless thoughts, so long her only companions, disappeared into a void as soon as they arose, as though pulled into space. They were whispers in a cathedral. They were ghosts, without relevance. She remembered that she had been on a quest, but now the idea of it seemed strange, and she could no longer hold the thought of its importance.

The silence, on the other hand, seemed almost loud in contrast. She spent the rest of the night feeling like a bird that had been freed from a cage into a palace of starlight, the silence now and again punctuated by the words "just this," though even these words were claimed by it.

call off the search

"If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation."
—J. Krishnamurti

My life as a seeker was motivated by a combination of suffering and a desire to feel passionately alive. With these motivations, I chased experiences, running away from my suffering self and running toward some imagined excitement. I wanted to see the range of possibilities wherein life’s secrets might be hidden, and this resulted in an exhaustive pursuit.

As a spiritual seeker and journalist I sought out those whom I considered to be the wisest people of our time and interviewed many of them for publication over two decades. I helped organize meditation retreats and centers, alternative educational programs, an organization to represent dispossessed nations and peoples—and somewhere or other I met almost every person in those fields whom I had admired from afar or who I thought had something to teach me. I also explored a wide range of social strata, moving among the wealthy elite and among those on the impoverished fringe.

And I meditated. I watched my thoughts, sensations, intentions, itches, emotions, pain, and breath until I came to know the landscape of my mind so well that no madness in it could surprise me. For nearly twenty years I practiced Buddhist meditation in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, while studying the great texts of Asian philosophy.

I traveled the world many times over, sometimes as a dharma bum, sometimes as a bohemian journalist, and sometimes first class. I backpacked overland from Italy to India, hitchhiked across the Moroccan desert, swam with dolphins, kayaked with orca whales, slept under stars in Afghanistan, and hiked mountains in Argentina, Switzerland, and India. I drove on roads laden with land mines on the Cambodian border while reporting on the war there, and I sat with many of the great contemporary spiritual teachers in some of the most peaceful places on earth. I went to Ladakh the first year it opened for visitors, spent many nights watching bodies burn on river ghats in India, chanted to Siva till dawn in Benares, danced to reggae till dawn in Jamaica.

I watched lunar eclipses from a sailboat in the South Pacific while stoned on psychedelics and from the snowy grounds of a New England monastery while stoned on silence. I had an international community of interesting, funny, and kindhearted friends engaged in spiritual, social, and environmental causes. I attended conferences and vacationed in the world’s most exotic playgrounds. I read important works of literature, nonfiction, and the new sciences. Along the way, I also had a number of romantic relationships with incredible men and once fell so wildly, passionately, and erotically in love that I may never quite recover from it.

But there was always something missing, and so the search went on. The problem was that no matter how satiated and alive I felt in moments of profound experience, it didn’t last. Like the hunger that returns only hours after the gourmet meal, or the thirst that follows soon after being quenched, the experience of fulfillment was limited by time. I yearned for a satisfaction deep in my being, unmitigated by time, but I found only a collection of experiences that had all ended.

The search had been an attempt to make more of myself. No matter how noble my various endeavors, the intention to enhance me remained a primary motivation. Even in meditation practice there was a hope that I would attain something one day, something more would be added on. I would get the insight, realization, satori, or enlightenment, and then I might finally be able to relax. I was always toppling forward, looking for the next experience, the next fix. During an electrifying moment of aliveness, I would also be aware of its impending end and of the need to re-create the feeling again somehow. I would be distracted from the full enjoyment of it by a desire to savor it later. I would miss the experience I was having in the present, like people who go on adventures and spend most of their time taking photographs, trying to capture their moments for later enjoyment and seeing present reality only through a tiny lens, fixated on a future that never comes.

Meeting my teacher Poonjaji woke an intelligence in me that knew there was nothing to do or to get and that the search itself was the problem. The very idea of a search must begin by thinking that something is missing. It assumes deprivation at the outset. What if we knew that nothing is missing—right now—that nothing is needed for our experience of aliveness but being alive? What need would there be for a search? What would you hope for? Picture it right now. What do you want in the future? What would it give you if you had it? Whatever that is, is it not available right now in your own being? Poonjaji used to say that when you realize this you will burst out laughing because what you were looking for was always with you, hidden in plain sight. He likened this to "searching for one’s glasses while wearing them."

In the deepest recesses of ourselves there is a most familiar quietude. It has been there through all our seeking and craving, as well as all the other events of our lives. It is a point of peace, a silent witnessing awareness that is fundamentally unperturbed no matter what happens. Steeping in this awareness, one is at ease in the present, fully welcoming what comes and fully releasing what goes—feeling alive throughout. This awareness is not something far away and in another time. It is already occurring right here and right now.

For instance, while watching a movie, we may swirl in a sea of emotions—fearful, romantic, humorous, or tragic. If the story is especially potent, we might feel all of these emotions in a single film. Yet no matter how swept away we might be by the movie or how gripped by the emotions of the experience, there is within us a quiet witnessing awareness that knows perfectly well that we are sitting in a theater all the while. If that were not so, we would surely flee the room as soon as any frightening situation occurred on the screen. We would run for our lives upon seeing the first weapon or firestorm coming at us, were it not for some part of our awareness knowing that the visions on the screen are not our most fundamental reality.

In a similar way, there is a field of silent awareness containing all the events of our days. Although we may sometimes be gripped by emotion or lost in a particular story, there is throughout each of our dramas a deeper reality of silent presence. This is a silence of the heart rather than an imposed cessation of speech or activity. It is a silence that is, we could say, the background of all activity. We don’t need to find it because it is not lost.

If this is so, why is there so much searching and craving? Seeking is compelling because it produces a way for the mind to have a job. It seems that we are almost genetically programmed toward relentless mental occupation with desire and avoidance, a desperate squirming out of now. Perhaps nature has demanded that we keep on the move in order to stay alive, but this is becoming detrimental to life. We have evolutionarily outgrown the usefulness of being in a prevailing state of fear and greed in order to compete and survive. We can no longer afford it. It is driving us to disaster.

Nevertheless, it is strange how much we resist the inherent peace and quiet that is always possible. Perhaps this is because resting in simple presence is so foreign to a lifelong habit of mental complication, and we may have confused complication with a sense of aliveness. We might assume that having no particular mental project would result in boredom. Or we may be overwhelmed by how vast and free life suddenly feels when our minds are not on the hunt. As the prisoner who, upon being released, quickly finds a way to land himself back in jail, or the bird who resists the flight out when its cage door is opened, we are sometimes daunted by freedom and retreat into the cramped but familiar closet of a busy mind.

Yet in awakened awareness the mind acclimates itself to an expansion in silence. It gets used to letting neurotic thoughts drift and fade into nothingness, and it gradually loses interest in them even as they continue to arise. Disinterest in neurotic thoughts limits their power. What becomes more interesting is the open expanse of awareness through which all thoughts and everything else emerge and dissolve. And because this is ongoing, the perception of it can sneak up on you at any moment. Right now, as you read these words, you might sense the seamless field of presence in which you, the words, and all the things around you are floating.

This silent witnessing awareness brings with it a quality of brilliance, alert yet at ease. It is not the brilliance of thought but the brilliance of pure perception, an impersonal intelligence. It pays no particular attention to thoughts that would tempt it from its tranquility but doesn’t mind that they come and go. There is no sense that something more is needed for contentment, and therefore a deep contentment prevails.

And suddenly the search is over. We have nowhere we need to go because all is in its place as is, ourselves included. We have nothing we need do to belong here because we feel no separation from existence. We still, more than ever, enjoy and passionately care about life, but we are no longer the beggar at its door, looking for love instead of being love. We realize that what we really wanted was not something that comes from seeking but that which comes from being found. We are as the prodigal son in Jesus’ parable. After long wandering, being lost and depraved, and looking in all the wrong places for happiness, we finally come home. And just as the father embraced his wayward son and laid a feast in his honor, we are welcomed home into our own shining presence every time.

releasing the story

Even when there has been a strong recognition of presence, the habitual story about ourselves usually continues to arise. Our eyes open in the morning and at first we are simply aware of seeing and sensing. There is no thought of or reference to an entity having an experience. There is just pure awareness, simply being. Then slowly the thoughts begin to swirl and gather around the old well-worn subject, the story of "I." This story comes in as many versions as there are people to tell it. And the more it dominates the awareness, the more it demands to be told.

We all know the experience. We are cornered at a social event in which someone has launched into a long-winded listing of his accomplishments, his children and their accomplishments, his possessions, his opinions, his travels, what he likes, what he doesn’t like, and what he plans to acquire in the future. We might feel that the man is barely aware of our existence except as a warm-blooded animal with the facility of hearing. And, in fact, we may be barely aware of him either. Our attention might be limited because a similar monologue about ourselves may be dominating our own awareness, though we might be restrained about vocalizing it.

It is called the story, and it is a way of thinking about oneself as a character who bases his inherent worth on acquiring things or experiences that make the character seem more interesting, successful, powerful, or sexy. The story may also be based on a character who sees himself as a victim and interprets events in the world to confirm his story of the hardship of life. His story may have more to do with all that he has suffered and now fears.

In both cases, the self-enhancing story and the self-denigrating story, the "I" character is always the star of the drama. We have rehearsed its lines and situations many thousands of times and are well practiced in our roles. We have imagined this entity for so long and with such intensity that the illusion, like any imaginary friend, seems to have a life of its own. Its adventures usually occur in one of two settings in time—past or future. And, of course, most of its future stories are simply based on pictures from its past. These stories may frighten, depress, or amuse us for a lifetime. Countless mental pictures of me—in the past, in the future, in the past, in the future.

As we walk through the landscape of the world, almost all that we see is interpreted with regard to its consequence to this character. The character of "I" is the central point of reference around which the story of the world revolves. I sometimes liken this self-referencing phenomenon to a metaphorical drama called The Universe, Starring Me!

When I was younger I had a great interest in my stories. I felt that the stories about who I was and what I had experienced needed to be frequently revisited as both a protection and a catharsis: a protection because I didn’t want to make any of the worst mistakes again; and a catharsis because I felt that repeatedly telling the story would reveal what it all meant. I told my story to whoever would listen, until I had thoroughly bored all of my friends and eventually myself with it.

Now, it is not entirely inappropriate that one has a story with "I" as the central character. Having a strong sense of oneself, both psychologically and interpersonally, is a developmental necessity. The story of "I" begins very early in our lives, probably at around the age of two, at which point it revolves mostly around "I like" and "I don’t like." This basic form of referring to the central character becomes more and more elaborate with time as the stories reflect more complicated desires and fears. Although the various events and emotions in the story develop dramatically throughout childhood and into adulthood (most of them now long forgotten), the idea of the central character remains the same, like the star of a long-running soap opera.

In awakened awareness, the story itself is not a problem. It is perceived as a habit that has its place and function, but it no longer dominates awareness. Awakened awareness knows when aspects of the "I" story need to be addressed but otherwise pays little attention to them. It is primarily interested in the present, while the story is usually concerned with the past or future and is therefore released as it arises because awakened awareness recognizes how little of it is relevant. Simply through disinterest, the thoughts about the character called "I" arise and fade like bubbles in the sun. It doesn’t matter that they continue to arise since they immediately fade away.

The fact is that all thought fades as soon as it arises. Of the millions of thoughts we have each experienced there is not a single one that has lasted. There are many that repeat in a similar way but each is actually distinct from previous ones. They all come and go in pristine awareness to which none of them adhere. There is no need to get rid of thought since there is no possibility of making it stay.

Being at home in present awareness was what my teacher called "keeping quiet." In this quiet he did not mean, "don’t talk," "don’t laugh," or even "don’t shout." He referred instead to noticing the quiet that encompasses all activity, thought, and words. We simply experience being through breath, sensation, sight, sound, smell, or taste. These direct experiences require no reference back to an entity, nor do they need stories to enliven them. As this awareness becomes more our habit, self-referencing becomes tedious, an extra mental workload with no reward. Our awareness is then more interested in what we are experiencing in real time rather than in making up a story about an imaginary time with a leading role for me.

When we experience life directly, we are not chopping it up into distinct pieces or relying on pictures from the past to give it meaning. We are not even particularly interested in giving things meaning. We live in an innocence that accepts life as it comes without trying to appropriate every occurrence for a story or a myth.

This is not to suggest that there is no place for myths or stories. We communicate by telling our life stories, and our culture communicates by telling its myths. If one were to sit next to someone on a train, it would be offensive to say, "There is only the experience of this present reality" to their question, "Where are you from?" Likewise, in any interpersonal relationship there is the appropriate place for life stories. But we realize that telling our stories is really about connecting with, as Emerson put it, "that common heart of which all sincere conversation is the worship."

"That common heart" is found in silence. Just as silence is intrinsically the ground of all music, silence is also the ground of all stories. As the notes of a melody arise from and dissolve into silence, our stories arise from and dissolve into silence as well. In confusion, we pay attention mostly to the stories. In awakened awareness, we pay attention mostly to the silence.

beyond words

"When you are deluded and full of doubt, even a thousand books of scriptures are not enough. When you have realized, even one word is too much."
—Fen Yang

Years ago I was in India when the Shankaracharya, the Hindu equivalent of a pope, died. The Times of India published a number of eulogies about the renowned master, one of which was written by a well-known journalist and friend of India’s former prime minister Indira Gandhi. It seems that Mrs. Gandhi would occasionally consult with the Shankaracharya in moments of turmoil during her administration as prime minister. On one visit to the holy man she invited her journalist friend to go with her. They flew by private plane, and upon arrival Mrs. Gandhi was immediately taken to see the Shankaracharya alone. After a couple hours she returned to the plane, and she and the journalist headed home to New Delhi. The journalist noticed that a deep serenity had come over the prime minister, and after some time he couldn’t help but ask, "Mrs. Gandhi, what happened in there?"

"It was wonderful," the prime minister replied. "I put all my questions to him, and he answered every one of them, but neither of us spoke a word."

The power of the Shankaracharya’s presence was so strong that it awakened the prime minister’s remembrance of her own. She found herself in the quiet understanding wherein questions are either answered or fade away. "The still small voice within" turns out to be silent. It perceives with an intelligence that has not been learned, an intelligence that is innate.

In awakened awareness we use language to communicate while knowing that another, more powerful communication is taking place in deeper awareness. Over the course of nearly thirty years I have been attending silent retreats, shared with literally thousands of people during that span of time. I once found myself in a remote part of the world where I ran into someone I had known from several retreats. Walking toward him with a smile on my face, I thought to myself, "Oh, there is my good friend . . . ," at which point I realized that, because we had always been silent together, I had never actually known his name. Nor had I known his nationality or his occupation. I knew nothing of his biography at all.

Yet I knew his being. I had seen him watching birds at sunset in the same spot each day. I had noticed the care with which he quietly removed his shoes before entering the meditation hall. I had been the recipient of his kindness when he helped me carry some of my belongings out of the rain. We had shared silent presence throughout the days and nights. Yet we had never once heard each other’s stories. Our only communication had occurred in what singer/songwriter Van Morrison calls "the inarticulate speech of the heart."

In awakened awareness we need not pretend that we are only a conglomeration of stories, an aggregate of accomplishments, or a survivor of miseries. We are willing to gaze into the eyes of another without fear or desire—without stories about who I am or who she is—and sense there only the light of existence shining in a particular pair of eyes.

In retreats we also notice the power of words to condition perception. By naming things we invoke a preconceived picture of the object or event and we therefore have a conditioned response to it, if only momentarily. Now, of course, language is a fantastic communication tool, necessary and useful. But it is helpful to know its place in our awareness and the limits of its usefulness. I often say, in paraphrasing Shakespeare, "A rose by no name at all would smell as sweet." There is an awareness that exists beyond words and allows our direct experience to be completely fresh. The more attuned we are to this awareness, the more quickly language and thought are analyzed for their usefulness and released. This occurs by what I call "steeping in silence," whereby the attention rests in quiet awareness and remains there more and more consistently, becoming stronger in its habit.

I always bring a thermos of tea to Dharma Dialogues and sip the tea throughout the evening. Sometimes, I forget to rinse out the thermos until the next morning, and if there was any tea left, it will have become much stronger than it was the night before. There was no tea bag in the thermos overnight. Only the tea. It became stronger by steeping in itself. Like this, our awareness in quiet becomes stronger by steeping in itself.

This adaptation to silence also dissolves barriers between us. Although words are mainly intended to form bridges of communication, they often have the opposite effect. Many people use words simply to fill the quiet. They are uncomfortable with silence and so they chatter. They hope to connect with others, but often the chatter prevents any real communication. In awakened awareness, one recognizes in the chatter an attempt for contact. Underneath the babble is someone who wants to be accepted, understood, or loved. What is seen by clear awareness in such cases is the simplicity of being, the human warmth beneath the torrent of words. The words then become nothing more than a little static in an otherwise clear transmission. However, if both minds are full of static, there is little possibility for knowing each other in the place where two are one. On the other hand, if two minds are well steeped in silence, a fantastic communication ensues. Thich Nhat Hanh once said of his friendship with Martin Luther King, Jr., "You could tell him just a few things, and he understood the things you did not say."

I have several times been privileged to be in the company of great teachers meeting each other for the first time. When I was younger I remember hoping that I would be privy to esoteric dharma discussions among the great ones or that they would perhaps dissect their philosophical differences and provoke a general debate among their students. But what usually happened was that they would just twinkle at each other. They would politely exchange pleasantries or discuss the weather, but mostly they were quiet, just twinkling away. Someone once asked the great Indian teacher Nisargadatta Maharaj, (whose dialogues in the classic book I Am That are some of the most powerful words on unbounded presence in print) what he thought might happen if he met Ramana Maharshi, another of the great saints of India. "Oh, we would probably be very happy," replied Nisargadatta Maharaj. "We may even exchange a few words."

the wellspring of genius

"Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves."
—Thomas Carlyle

Picture a single stroke of calligraphy on a white canvas. Every marking of ink by the brush stands out in full relief against the white background. Every nuance of the freedom in the stroke as it had once flowed and swept across the canvas is clearly visible. Now imagine the canvas full of random chaotic scrawls such that there is hardly a square inch unmarked. Imagine also that the same calligraphy is among the scrawls as well, but of course now it is much harder to see or even to find. As beautiful as it may have been, it goes unnoticed amid the chaos.

Just so, the strokes of genius in our minds. In silence our creative flickers of genius stand out in clear relief as soon as they arise. In chaotic mind, a mind obsessed with thought and neurosis, flickers of genius often go completely unnoticed. They may arise frequently, bursts of inspiration coming from some mysterious source, but if the mind is transfixed by its jumble of thoughts, the impulses of genius just flicker back into the void.

Now, some people think that great creativity comes from mental agony. They speculate that quietness of being is not useful for creativity, citing the lives of many great artists who were seemingly depressed or even suicidal. If we look at the life of Vincent van Gogh, for example, we might conclude that depression was conducive for producing great art. But I suggest a different interpretation for the source of his art. Perhaps it was only during the act of painting that he experienced the deep peace of simply being. When in the act of painting, Van Gogh may well have had a special connection, an exalted connection, to a sense of pure presence, and from that deep silence his fantastic paintings emerged. Painting was perhaps his doorway to the divine. The beauty he saw suggests an unclouded awareness, no matter the demons that haunted him at other times.

Mystics, mathematicians, poets, writers, and dreamers all tell us that their visions come to them seemingly out of the blue, when there is no trying to perform or impress. One may be walking in the garden, another taking a shower, another sitting quietly watching the rain when suddenly the insight or vision comes shooting like a comet through the sky of awareness. From where does this genius arise? It comes from the inherent intelligence that is available when we are quiet, when our minds are not running the show. It is upstream from thought. Awakened awareness.

The creativity that emerges from this kind of intelligence is different from that born of ambition. Ambition is generally driven by ego-based needs, thoughts of "I." With this motivation, the desire to create is mainly the desire to create a legend, a legend called "me." People erect towers of varying types of achievements and publicly dedicate them, but their internal dedication is to I. "I did this; I must be grand." The creativity that comes from ambition often has the taint of ego in it, no matter how majestic or laudable the production. Its contribution usually serves the general thrust of competition in the world. It titillates the movements of ego and often fosters jealousy and resentment.

The creativity that comes from silence, from a quiet heart, feels different from that of ambition to both the creator and the observer. When the artist or the worker is out of the way, both the creator and the observer experience the art as simply a gift, an expression of the impersonal intelligence shared by all. The creator has no need to take credit for it, the observer no need to possess it. Some of the most beautiful works of art on earth were created anonymously: most of the ancient Chinese paintings of the Ming dynasty, which influenced Asian art for the next thousand years; the great Buddha statues of Sri Lanka; the pyramids, which were built in Egypt when they had no words for art or artists; and many of the intricately patterned Amish quilts of the last two hundred years. These anonymous works speak to the quiet within each of us.

Sometime in the late 1970s, a friend and I visited an exhibit of Japanese landscape paintings on scrolls by Zen masters of the fifteenth century. Each scroll represented a small world of peace. They depicted lovely scenes of nature, temples, mountains, and monks pointing to the moon, surrounded by a preponderance of sky represented by white space. Walking through the exhibit, we became more and more quiet. It felt as though a cool breeze swept through my being, as though I were walking on ancient paths of peace. We had received a transmission of silence from the Zen masters in the form of their art, so powerful was the awakened awareness that had produced those paintings some five hundred years earlier.

As we left that exhibit, we passed through a section of the museum where European paintings from around the same time were displayed. Pictures of beheadings and gore abounded, usually attached to some religious symbolism. The characters in the scenes were ornately and heavily clothed. Surrounded by opulence, food, and drink, their general demeanor seemed miserable. Every inch of canvas was covered and all of it depressing. This, too, was a transmission. I felt the weight of living in that time and place where awakened perception was likely quashed or persecuted wherever it arose. Leaving aside the technical accomplishment of the paintings, I found the art from that period a transmission of gloom. I felt compassion for the people of that time along with gratitude for living in the time and place that I do.

The experience in the museum that day has informed my relationship to creative expression ever since. When viewing art through awakened awareness, one feels directly into the moment of its creation and clearly senses the heart of the artist. This transmission comes to us in printed words, sculptures, buildings, dances, movies, and children’s coloring books. It comes to us anywhere that life articulates itself, and it crosses time.

Creative expression that flows through awakened awareness penetrates the receiver in an unforgettable way. Consider the words that have come to us from Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, the Chinese Patriarchs, or the Buddha. Their words hold power after thousands of years because their very lives were the creative expression of universal intelligence, some of its most stunning works of art. We have forgotten the kings, the dancers, the politicians, and the painters of those times. But we have remembered the awakened ones; their presence lives as a reminder of the presence within each of us, a wellspring of genius that makes timeless art of our temporal lives.

aloneness

"In solitude we are the least alone."
—Lord Byron

It is said that some of his students once asked Rumi to reconcile his incessant speaking on the subject of silence. Rumi replied, "That which is truest of me has never uttered a word."

There is a depth in each of us that has never uttered a word. It is a place of total aloneness. "A path so narrow," my teacher would say, "that two cannot walk abreast." No matter how connected with community, family, friends, society, or nature we might feel, there is a deep silent aloneness in us all. We know that the experiences we have had, the secret moments of joy, beauty, or love, as well as the particular shades of our sorrow, can be fully known only to ourselves. We may share events with others, but we are each on our own inner journeys, and each is completely unique. For this very reason—the singular expression that we each are—aloneness is inevitable. The creative force of the universe does not make exact copies, even in clones, so there is no escaping the aloneness that is part of being an original work of cosmic art.

And yet much of human activity aims at avoiding this very fact. People are often terrified of aloneness because they experience it as loneliness. They keep busy with work, stay in motion by traveling, or surround themselves with people at almost all times. They might use intoxicants, television, sex, or food to dull the awareness of deep aloneness. But it lurks in consciousness and sneaks up on them, cold and desolate, any time of the night or day. The efforts to avoid feelings of loneliness may actually cause the feelings to be more intense when they finally break through. We do what we can to distract ourselves from these feelings, but in our private moments they arise with a vengeance and with them a kind of madness. This madness can induce desperate and harmful actions. Much of the trouble in the world may simply be the result of resistance to our irrefutable aloneness. As the French philosopher Blaise Pascal noted in the seventeenth century, "All of man’s miseries stem from his inability to sit quietly in a room and do nothing."

In awakened awareness the experience of aloneness is not a cause for fear or despair. It is a sanctuary of silence, a private abode, "a room of one’s own"; the one place loneliness cannot reach. Aloneness in this sense is not a hardship of isolation but a refuge from the demands of constant mental and physical activity. When we know our aloneness in this way, we feel it even in the midst of activity. We feel it when we are with others or with that one special other. We feel it when on a podium speaking to hundreds of people or at a family gathering of dozens of relatives. As Albert Einstein wrote: "I am truly a ‘lone traveler’ and have never belonged to my country, my friends, or even my immediate family with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude, feelings which increase with the years."

My teacher Poonjaji was as a lion in his aloneness. For many years he wandered in the foothills of India, sometimes sharing dharma with the few people who would chance upon him, sometimes traveling with another, but mostly walking alone and letting fate take him where it would. He kept diaries for some of that time, and reading them is an insight into awakened mind. He would often mark the date and place of a journal entry, but beyond that there would be nothing about the local area, people, or sights he had seen. His interest was in a journey occurring on another scale of time and space. A typical entry: "In me the universe moves hither and thither, impelled by the wind of its own inherent nature."

I met Poonjaji much later in his life. His health had diminished to the point that he could no longer walk without help, and consequently he was almost always surrounded by people. Yet I have never sensed anyone so alone. His was a majestic aloneness, like that of the ocean or the sky. For me his aloneness is probably the most inspiring aspect about him. He lived in a depth in which one can bring nothing and no one—no friends, no children, no spouses, no possessions.

In Dharma Dialogues I often refer to this majestic aloneness as "a mountain seat of freedom." It is as though one is resting on a mountaintop, quietly gazing into vastness, enjoying space in all directions. Welcoming whatever arises in the sky, one notices that thoughts pass by like clouds, feelings fade like rainbow colors, sensations flicker like birds twittering. Here is only the luminous present, the open expanse of being, and whatever is passing through the sky right now. A sense of fullness prevails. No attention is paid to mental commentary about what should or should not be happening. There is just relaxation into what is—only suchness.

And, finally, in awakened awareness aloneness becomes irrelevant. The sense of it fades as there is no one to feel alone, no one to speak about the majesty of aloneness. All mental activity effortlessly subsumes into the silence from which it arose. There is no feeling of self or other than self. There is only the wind blowing through boundless awareness, the light shining in our eyes, and the sounds of life reverberating right through us.

peace

"Lulled by Time’s beats, eternity sleeps in us."
—Sri Aurobindo

There is a fable about a young man who lived long ago in Istanbul, Turkey. Because he was poor, he had only a single room, sparsely furnished with a few books and a small cot for a bed. One night the young man had a dream—a vision, really. In it he saw himself walking on a street in what he came to realize was the city of Cairo in Egypt, a place he had never been. He could clearly see the name of the street and the houses that lined the road. In the vision he walked up to one particular house, noting the address. He entered into a tiled courtyard and then into the main house. An open door drew him to a particular room within the house. In this room sat an old man surrounded by treasures beyond anything the young man had ever imagined.

Diamonds, emeralds, and rubies were piled high in pyramid shapes. Gold and silver bars lined the walls. Exquisite carpets and artifacts from around the world lay at his feet. The young man stared at the treasures and then at the old man in amazement, for in that moment he somehow knew that these treasures belonged to him. He didn’t know how he knew (it was a vision, after all) but he was certain that all of it was rightfully his.

The young man bolted awake from the dream. So confident was he in its veracity that he set off that very day on the long journey from Istanbul to Cairo in order to claim his treasure. In those days travel was slow and the young man, being poor, had to work along the way to pay for food and lodging. After several months he eventually arrived in Cairo. Upon making inquiries, he found the very street he had seen in his dream. As he set foot upon it, everything seemed completely familiar. The houses were exactly as he had seen them in his dream/vision. And sure enough, the house that in the dream had contained the old man and his treasure was precisely where the young man expected it to be. Knowing his way, he entered into the tiled courtyard and then into the room of treasures where he planned to make his claim.

There sat the old man, but there were no jewels, no gold or silver, no carpets or artifacts. The young man, undeterred by the absence of the treasures, recounted his vision to the old man and concluded by saying, "Since everything else in my vision has been accurate, I assume that the riches are hidden here somewhere. Please hand them over to me."

The old man was silent for some time, looking intently at the young man, his eyes glistening. After a while, he spoke. "It’s strange," he said. "I, too, had a dream. I dreamed of a young man in Istanbul who looked exactly like you."

"Yes, go on," implored the young man, certain that this information would lead to his treasure.

The old man proceeded to describe the street on which the young man lived in Istanbul. He described the young man’s mother and father, his siblings, his friends at work, and the books on the wall of his simple room. "In my vision," said the old man "the greatest treasure, more precious than all the shiny rocks and metals of the world, was there on a small cot in that room."

The young man suddenly realized what the old one meant. In that moment, he saw that his existence, his very being, was all the treasure he would ever want or need. A profound peace overcame him. He bowed to the wise man and, taking his leave, returned home to Istanbul where he lived out his quiet days.

While the young man’s journey home to himself dominates this story, I am equally interested in the role of the old wise one. His presence and clarity were so strong that with just a few words from him the young man awoke to the greatest realization of his life. This story illustrates how the peace of simply being is not only a reward in itself but a blessing to all who encounter it. In it, one becomes as a large shade tree quietly offering comfort and shelter to those in the various storms of life.

In becoming refuges of peace, we have likely had to go through our own journeys of confusion, just like the young man in the story. This enables us to understand those who do not sense their own simple presence, searching everywhere else for it, like "the musk deer who searches the world over for the source of its own scent," as Ramakrishna said. Hoping to find something to make it all okay or to feel good about ourselves, we will try anything, and we often end up only making matters worse. Our hunger for finding treasures or any other circumstances that we think will bring us peace inhibits our resting in the peace that we are.

In awakened awareness there is no notion that peace is found anywhere but in one’s being. Much of our world is in chaos and has been so for as long as we know. Even in times of relative peace the daily events of life can go haywire at any moment: trouble with a spouse, children, or friends; difficulties with one’s job; loved one’s having accidents or falling ill; one’s own health becoming precarious; relatives and friends dying. When we read and listen to the news, this world can truly seem like hell. War, environmental devastation, starvation of millions, random violence, terrorism, torture, and children being kidnapped and murdered are reported daily with the steadiness of a drumbeat. How can any of us find peace in such a world? The answer is, we cannot. There is no lasting peace to be found in the circumstances of the world. If the humans don’t get you, nature will.

And yet there is a sanctuary. It is not in the circumstances of the world but in the recognition of the silence that contains it. This silence is our own deep and true nature, and we can visit it or live in it any time we remember to do so. In Dharma Dialogues, people sometimes wonder what they can do for the world. I speak of the necessity of knowing the treasure of being itself and finding there the peace that is not dependent on anything else. This understanding brings calm to everyone who encounters it. It decreases the violence and fear in the world, and it reminds others of the gift that is more precious than all the riches ever known. In silence, we can feel it: eternity sleeping in us.

—Reprinted from Passionate Presence: Experiencing the Seven Qualities of Awakened Awareness by Catherine Ingram by permission of Gotham Books, a member of The Penguin Group (USA). Copyright © 2003 by Catherine Ingram. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced without permission.

TOP