LIBRARY

Rediscovered years later in an old file, the following talk was written by Adyashanti in preparation for the first silent retreat he taught, in July 1997:

Starting right now, this moment, I am asking you to become the Buddha. I am asking you to take your stand, to stand absolutely firm in your intention to awaken to the Truth of your Self.

This is what the Buddha did. He didn’t say, “I’ll try.” He didn’t say, “I hope I’ll find the Truth.” He didn’t say, “I’ll do my best.” He didn’t say, “If not in this lifetime, then maybe next lifetime.” He came to the point where he didn’t look for anyone else to tell him the Truth or show him the Truth. He came to the point where he took it all on himself. He sat alone under the Bodhi Tree and vowed never to give up until the Truth be realized.

The power of this very simple, yet unshakable intention and absolute stand to be liberated in this lifetime propelled him to awaken to the simple fact that he and all beings are liberated—that all beings are freedom itself. Pure awakeness.

The Buddha was no different from you. No different. That is why he serves as a good model, because he was as you are now. So don’t worship the Buddha. Don’t put him on a pedestal. Don’t even look up to him. Become him. Have the same intentions, take the same stand. Be the Buddha now! Put an end to all delaying, to all excuses, to all bowing down to saintly figures of the past or present. Stand up!
You are the Buddha! You are freedom itself! Stop dreaming your dream! Stop pretending that you are in bondage—stop telling yourself that lie! Stop pretending to be someone, or something! You are no one, you are no-thing! You are not this body or this mind. This body and mind exist within who and what you are. You are pure consciousness, already free, awake, and liberated. Stand up and walk out of your dream. I am here to say that you can do this.

Step out of the dream of your concepts and ideas. Step out of the dream of what you imagine enlightenment to be. Step out of the dream of who you think you are. Step out of the dream of everything you have ever known. Step out of your dream of being a deluded person. Stop telling yourself those lies and dreaming those dreams. Step out of all of that. You can do it. Nothing is holding you back. There are no requirements and no prerequisites to awaken. There is nothing to be done, nothing to think, nowhere to go.

Just stop all dreaming. Stop all doing. Stop all excuses. Just stop and be still. Effortlessly be still. Grace will do the rest.

At each and every moment from here on out, have the intention to directly experience Truth, your true liberated Self. Don’t think about the Truth—directly return to your experience here, now, moment to moment. Experience Truth. Experience your Self. Dive into your experience. Your experience! Your experience of hearing, of seeing, of tasting, of breathing, of your heart beating, of your feet touching the floor, of the birds, of the wind.

Experience the vastness of who you are. Experience the freedom of who you are. You are the Buddha—experience that. You are the Buddha.

© 2005 Adyashanti

Excerpted from Adya’s audio course Redemptive Love (Q&A)

Q: I have been sitting with allowing all things to be as they are—my illness, confusion, relationships, etc.—and in that silent acceptance I feel peace. But when I have to actually interact with the world, I can feel myself responding from my conditioned mind and ego. Sitting with the idea of redemptive love when I am alone seems to be easier than when life presents situations asking for my engagement—husband, children, clients, family, etc.

What could I practice in such moments, or what thought can I contemplate to help me move more from a place of authenticity rather than craving to be alone?

A: It is easier to be in a state of acceptance when you are alone and not in relationship with anything other than yourself. But life is nothing but constant relationship: relationship with the environment, people, situations, work, play, as well as with your own inner experience. The question is, “How am I to be in relationship with all of life?” Even if we have experienced the oneness of all existence, the One is still in constant relationship with itself. So, from where inside are we relating to all of the events of life?

In any situation we are either relating from fear or love. If we are trying to control, manipulate, gain power over, dominate, be agreed with, be loved, be right, be a victim, etc., we are relating from fear. And since fear is a very weak force, although it can be experienced very strongly, we are diminished and dominated by it. Fear in all its varied forms is what fuels the dream state of sorrow and violence. Wherever it is motivating action, it is ultimately destructive and life numbing. This is not to say that one should not feel fear, only that to act or relate from fear is destructive. Simply because we feel fear does not mean that we need to act and relate from it. In fact, the more open we are to experiencing fear, the less it controls our actions. Love does not fear fear, because Love is a much stronger force in the world.

The remedy for fear is not courage, it is Love—although courage is sometimes necessary. Love will always conquer fear.

So ask yourself, “What would Love do?”—not your idea of love, which for most people is quite distorted, but the universal reality of love. This is not as complicated as people make it out to be. So don’t refer to your ideas about love, but rather evoke the reality of love by simply asking the question, What would Love do? This question is a deep inquiry, something to really sit with and allow to grow within yourself. You must get underneath your old ideas of what Love is and how it moves in the world. Sit in the silence of the question. Don’t jump to quick answers. And remember that Love is not sentimental or indulgent. Love is fearless, wise, and true, and therefore it is an extremely healing and unifying grace. Love is absolute intimacy and truth in action.

Love is absolute intimacy and truth in action. Remember this and contemplate it until it begins to come alive within you. Love is absolute intimacy and truth in action. Love is the living embodiment of grace.

Although Redemptive Love can be experienced as a healing infusion of grace, it also seeks to be put into action.

© Adyashanti 2014

Excerpted from Adya’s book Sacred Inquiry

Q: I know directly and profoundly that I am nothing. And from that knowing it’s clear, at least intellectually and maybe more deeply, that the multiplicity of appearance is an expression of nothingness. But I still get caught in multiplicity, especially in anger and despair over the havoc we are causing on the planet. It seems to me that until I can hold the facts of resource depletion, species extinction, and climate change in the space of nothingness, the process of awakening is incomplete.

Do I accept that the humanity in me will always be outraged about these things and that there can simultaneously be a knowing of the nothingness of it? Or is there a “place” where there is only abiding in the nothingness of multiplicity? How can I work with this incompleteness and know that I am everything in the way Nisargadatta did?

A: So many people are outraged at the senseless way that we treat each other and this amazing planet that we find ourselves on. Does that outrage solve the immense problems of humanity, or does it fuel them? It seems to me that the world does not need any more outrage than it already has. It does, though, desperately need more love put into action. Perhaps your feelings of outrage are actually originating in a love that you have not yet fully acknowledged and acted upon. Perhaps if you saw how much you truly care and love, and got on with expressing that as best you could, you would not feel outraged and afraid. Love denied turns to anger. Love expressed creates the space and conditions where more love can flower. Love isn’t just a feeling—it is an act of courage.

© Adyashanti 2021

Leslie writes: Several years ago, while on retreat with you, the insight suddenly hit that what I had thought of as “me” was just an illusory boundary. I laughed and cried as beliefs seemed to pop and dissolve like soap bubbles. Awareness or presence, well, just simply is.

A lot of seeking has fallen away, but the perception of unity or “Everything is one” still remains not really experienced. Any pointers or inquiries you would suggest for unity to move beyond intellectual understanding? I somehow intuit that it’s another layer of “illusory boundary” that hasn’t been seen through. Sometimes it feels like I’m trying to crack an unsolvable riddle!

Adyashanti: Here is the direct answer to your question: Simply contemplate the question “What is the world?” By contemplate, I mean to simply form the question in your mind. Don’t think about it. Just present the question and relax your awareness as much as possible. That’s the “how.”

Experiencing unity is a bit like getting a joke. The “getting” of a joke is what causes the laughter. In a sense, the getting is the laughter. But we don’t laugh because we have analyzed the joke and come to understand it; we laugh because the joke exposes something about ourselves. It removes the seriousness of the boundaries that we believe in and live by. It reveals that they are absurd and therefore funny. The same is true of the beliefs that cause us to experience boundaries. In a very real sense, beliefs are the creators of the experience of boundaries. They are absurd, even if at times useful, fictions, but only experienced as absurd when we see that they are absurd and worthy of a good laugh.

Every description, every name, every belief—good or bad—every concept, creates boundaries where there are in fact no boundaries at all. Even to say “I” instantly imposes a boundary upon what is actually a unified field of being. To say “I” instantly creates what is not “I.” “Big” is always in relationship to “small,” “up” in relationship to “down,” “good” in relationship to “bad,” “heads” of a coin in relationship to “tails.” Words imply that these opposites exist separately from one another, but they do not. They are simply different ways of looking at the same thing. You cannot have the crest of a wave without also having its trough; they are in reality one dynamic process.

As I have often said, each thing is its total environment. Remove the environment in which anything exists, and the thing will also not exist, which is to say that there is no such thing as a thing. To call something a thing, or to give it a name, is to conceptually impose boundaries upon it where they do not actually exist. A tree does not exist independently of its environment; it is its total environment. It takes a cosmos to produce a tree—no cosmos, no tree. To say “tree” implies the entire cosmos. The same is true of you.

When we give any aspect of the cosmos a name like tree, or human being, or rain cloud, we forget that we are imposing boundaries where there actually are no boundaries. There are, of course, practical uses to doing such a thing, but practical usefulness does not mean that what we are naming actually exists independently from the dynamic process of life. Even to say that we are presence or awareness mistakenly implies that we are not what we are aware of. It is an intermediate level of realization, and is much more freeing than experiencing ourselves to be a separate someone, but is still defined and experienced as its own form of formless separateness. It is formless presence as opposed to the world of forms. But formlessness and form appear together, and beyond even together. They are ways of looking at one dynamic process. They are simply two different points of view from within that process.

When we drop whatever point of view we are entertaining, the illusory experience of separateness and having conceptually imposed boundaries disappears. Concepts, names, descriptions, beliefs, and opinions are nothing more than abstract ideas that have the power to create very real feelings and experiences within our bodies and alter our perception of the world to an extraordinary extent. So even though concepts are a part of daily functioning, and necessarily so to some degree (though not to the degree that we imagine), when we forget that the boundaries they impose upon our perception is an illusion, we take the conceptual game of naming and believing far too seriously and lose not only our sense of humor, but also any deep sense of freedom and love. We stop taking ourselves lightly and become like an unbendable blade of grass forever bracing itself against the slightest breeze.

In truth we are the All, as is everyone and everything else. There is simply nothing else to be. The All is not here to be understood as a noun; it is a process, and not even that. It is the process of existence and nonexistence as well. It cannot be known in the conventional sense, because all that is known is an idea, an object within consciousness. And by the way, ideas are it too. But it is not defined or limited by its ideas. The All that you are can only be lived, either unconsciously or consciously. It has a simple intuitive regard for itself, from within all of itself. If you want to find yourself, just open your eyes, and there you are. Or close your eyes, and there you are: something, nothing, someone, no one, everything, not-a-thing. Living, dying, smiling, crying—one Self experienced as many selves. The entire cosmos awake to itself, and not even that, and all of that.

Quick now, where is the Buddha?

With Great Love,
Adya

Excerpted from “The Philosophy of Enlightenment”

© Adyashanti 2016

A truly spiritual life is a life dedicated to a series of self-transcending commitments. By self-transcending I do not mean self-denying or self-negating, I mean something that is all-inclusive and not ego driven. I also mean something that is for the benefit of all beings. But essentially self-transcending commitments are doorways into all-inclusive reality, the reality of our true nature that is the fabric of our actual existence. In a sense, spiritual practice is the practice of helping true nature realize itself and embody itself as each of our lives as consciously as possible.

I do not intend this to be understood in a theoretical way, because to say that our practice is the practice of helping true nature realize itself is more of a poetic statement. It is something that you feel and intuit more than something that you believe or hold as a concrete fact. It is a way of understanding and approaching spirituality and spiritual practice from a broad and non-egocentric perspective. True nature is our true nature, and it is also something that we are serving and helping, and it is also serving and helping each of us as well. This is the paradox of spiritual practice that is so important to understand. But this understanding can only grow out of practice like a flower grows out of the ground. We cannot truly understand this paradox abstractly in our conceptual mind, it only grows out of the soil of committed spiritual practice. Which is to say that we must do it in order to understand it. Most things in life are like this, you must do them in order to understand them.

You cannot understand what an apple tastes like unless you eat an apple, or what it feels like to create music unless you are a musician, or what if feels like to give birth to a baby until you actually give birth. There is an old saying that expresses this idea in a different way. It says, “Do not judge someone until you walk a mile in their shoes.” I think that our world would be a much kinder and loving place if we all put this into practice. Such a practice is a good example of a self-transcending commitment. It is a good spiritual practice because it is not egocentric, it is wisdom born of actual human experience. This is something that we need to remember, wisdom is always and only born of non-egocentric human experience. Wisdom is not an abstraction, is not a belief, opinion, or reaction; it is born of experience.

Spiritual practice is so important because it is rooted in experience, meaning that it is something that you do. It is a commitment to doing something rather than merely thinking and conceptualizing. This is why we meditate and bring great awareness to each moment of our lives, and question our beliefs, and inquire, and seek to embody our understanding within the context of our daily lives. It is exacting, humbling, joyous and liberating spiritual practice. It is true nature waking up to itself and embodying itself as this very life. It is who and what we are, and it is also what we serve moment to moment through our commitment to being as awake and loving as we can. My teacher said that we are always being, and always becoming Buddha. This is true wisdom, not too attached to always and already being, and not too attached to always becoming. To experience this is to be like an eternal stable mountain that flows like water nourishing the entire earth. This to me is what the spiritual life is.

Copyright © 2021 Adyashanti.

What you are now stands before me immortal and true. I see it in the ground underfoot, and in the clouds in the sky, and in the mist gathering among the canyons, and in the face of the old man walking his grandchild down the sidewalk. In the robes of monks I see it, and in the rags worn by the women begging for change outside the supermarket. I see it in the sympathetic eyes of the mother greeting her young son as he returns home from the war, and in the father trying to comfort his baby daughter as he stands in line at the grocery store. I see it in the curve of my face in the mirror, and in the multitudes of stars in the sky.

I not only see it but I hear it as well. I hear it in the cries of the newborn baby hungry for its mother’s breast, and in the laughter of the old men sitting in the donut store together, and in the quiet sobs of the man placing flowers at his wife’s grave. I hear it in the ancient chants echoing through the open window of the old church, and in the ladies sitting on benches in the garden laughing with delight, and in the man working at the butcher shop asking his customers “Who’s next?”

What calls the ear to listen or the eye to see more than the surface façade that shrouds the essential spirit? Parting the strata and dross, what is essential picks its way through the manicured narrative of endless lives. In each moment of every day, Truth is not lacking or held in abeyance for some later date; it is given in full measure, and abundantly so. Do not be afraid of what appears to be chaos or dissolution—embrace the full measure of your life at any cost. Bare your heart to the Unknown and never look back. What you are stands content, invisible, and everlasting. All means have been provided for our endless folly to split open into eternal delight. 

© Adyashanti 2011

Wahre Meditation hat keine Richtung, kein Ziel und benutzt keine Methode. Alle Methoden zielen darauf ab, einen bestimmten Geisteszustand zu erreichen. Alle Zustände sind begrenzt, nicht von Dauer und an Bedingungen geknüpft. Die Faszination durch bestimmte Zustände führt nur zu Unfreiheit und Abhängigkeit. Wahre Meditation ist das Verweilen im ursprünglichen Bewusstsein.

Wahre Meditation zeigt sich spontan im Bewusstsein, wenn die Wahrnehmung nicht auf  Objekte der Wahrnehmung fixiert ist.  Wenn man anfängt Meditation zu erlernen, kann man bemerken, dass die Wahrnehmung sich immer auf irgendein Objekt fokussiert: auf Gedanken, körperliche Empfindungen, Emotionen, Erinnerungen, Klänge etc. Dies liegt daran, dass der Geist darauf konditioniert ist, sich auf Objekte zu fokussieren und sich um sie herum zusammenzuziehen.

Dann interpretiert der Geist zwangsweise das,  was ihm bewusst ist (das Objekt) auf mechanistische und verzerrte Art und Weise. Er beginnt aufgrund seiner Konditionierungen aus der Vergangenheit Schlussfolgerungen zu ziehen und Annahmen zu machen.

Bei der wahren Meditation behalten die Objekte ihre natürliche Funktionsweise bei. Dies bedeutet, dass kein Versuch unternommen werden sollte, irgendein Objekt der Wahrnehmung zu manipulieren oder zu unterdrücken. Bei der wahren Meditation liegt die Betonung  darauf, die Wahrnehmung selbst zu sein; nicht darauf, Objekte wahrzunehmen, sondern als das ursprüngliche Bewusstsein selbst zu verweilen. Das ursprüngliche Bewusstsein ist die Quelle aus der alle Objekte entstehen und in die sie wieder zurückkehren.

Wenn man sich sanft in die Wahrnehmung hinein entspannt, in das Lauschen, wird das zwanghafte Zusammenziehen des Geistes um die Objekte herum verblassen. Die Stille des Seins wird klarer in das Bewusstsein treten als eine Einladung zu ruhen und zu verweilen. Eine Haltung des offenen Aufnehmens, frei von jeder Absicht oder Vorwegnahme, wird die Gegenwart von Ruhe und Stille als deinen natürlichen Grundzustand enthüllen.

Ruhe und Stille sind keine Zustände und können daher nicht hergestellt oder erschaffen werden. Ruhe ist der Nicht-Zustand, in dem alle Zustände entstehen und  wieder vergehen. Ruhe, Stille und  wahrnehmendes Bewusstsein sind keine Zustände und können in ihrer umfassenden Gesamtheit niemals als Objekte erfahren werden. Die Ruhe ist selbst der ewige Zeuge ohne Form oder Eigenschaften.

Wenn du selbst immer stärker als der Zeuge verweilst, nehmen alle Objekte ihre natürliche Funktionsweise an und die Wahrnehmung wird frei von den zwanghaften Kontraktionen und Identifikationen des Geistes. Sie kehrt zu ihrem natürlichen Nicht-Zustand der Gegenwärtig-keit zurück.

Die einfache, jedoch grundlegende Frage “Wer bin ich?” kann dann das eigene Selbst enthüllen, nicht als die endlose Tyrannei der Ego-Persönlichkeit, sondern als die objektlose Freiheit des Seins -- als ursprüngliches Bewusstsein, in dem alle Zustände und alle Objekte kommen und gehen als Manifestationen des Ewigen Ungeborenen Selbst, das DU BIST.

© Adyashanti 2012

Excerpted from The Most Important Thing: Discovering Truth at the Heart of Life published by Sounds True.

Transformation tends to happen when we stop or something stops us—a tragedy, a difficulty—and we reassess and realize that the way we are going about life must be redefined. Sometimes we will need to redefine our whole identity. This does not just happen to spiritually advanced beings—this is human stuff. These moments occur with some regularity, and if we recognize how important they are, when they come, we can see them as both great challenges and great opportunities. How we respond is important. Do we search for a quick solution, for a quick answer, or for somebody to save us from our insecurity? Or do we find the wherewithal to settle into those moments and meet ourselves? We can lean forward into what is occurring, into the human experience or unresolved quality—whether it is doubt, or fear, or hesitation, or indecision, or whatever our pattern is that causes us to not throw ourselves entirely into that moment.

We never know when these moments are coming. Some are big, and some are much smaller. We should not assume that the small moments are not as important as the big, obvious ones, because attending to the small moments is the way we build a capacity to attend to the big moments of crisis. It is the reason why most spiritual traditions have various ways of getting us to pay attention to our life, even when nothing significant seems to be going on. This comes from an acknowledgment, a realization that vital moments are current in our life and there are decisions being made—consciously or unconsciously—about how we are going to relate to them.

Do you relate to life as an unfolding mystery and an adventure of discovery? An encounter with your immense capacity for wisdom, love, and experiencing life with intimacy and vitality? We have extraordinary abilities as human beings when we begin to recognize the vitality of certain moments and we bring a consciousness to them. These vitality moments happen in our lives with great regularity and are opportunities for awakening and transformation. We must repeatedly embrace the insecurity of these moments and by doing so come to trust them and so ourselves. In these moments, all we need is knowledge of the next step and the willingness to take it. Paradoxically, the knowing of what the next step is arises when we have the capacity to rest in not knowing what the next step is and to recognize this is an intimate part of the process of transformation.

© Adyashanti  & Sounds True 2019

We Are the World, the World Is Us

Q: My question is regarding the welfare of all beings (or compassion) being a part of authentic spiritual impulse or the intention behind entering into spirituality.

My earlier spiritual training had a strong emphasis on service, and service as a path for realization. As I became more serious about spirituality, there was a strong urge to serve. But unknowingly, my ego took over and created an image of I have to serve. When I ventured into full-time service, my ego took a heavy beating, and I saw my whole image of I have to serve shatter in front of me. That was the point when I got introduced to your teachings, and it has helped me to lift myself up.

Based on what I understood from your teachings, the passion or desire for truth is the authentic spiritual impulse, and compassion, feeling for the welfare of the world, peace, etc., would just be byproducts of the true realization. Now I am confused when you bring up compassion and the welfare of the world as part of the authentic spiritual impulse.

A: There is no way to separate truth from the welfare of all, since the revelation of truth reveals that we are the world, the world is us. The whole universe is contained within you. That is not just transcendent truth; it is also experienced as boundless love and compassion. What I’m getting at here is our spiritual motivation. Love for all is an aspect of our true being. If we do not access this, we remain essentially self-centered. Wisdom without love can be callous and harsh. Truth and love are simply two sides of the same coin—they cannot be separated.

I have met many people who have had a partial awakening. They realize some profound truth, but their heart is still essentially closed. They are half awake, and therefore essentially self-centered. This same phenomenon can happen when someone awakens to boundless love but not deep wisdom. Either way, it is like hopping around on one leg. I think it both wise and natural to include all beings within our spiritual motivations, as well as our more personal motivations.

Of course we can build more spiritual-appearing egos around the identity of being selfless and a servant of the good—such identities are as unreal as any other. Nonetheless, an altruistic attitude (without the accompanying ego identity) is conducive to realization and a benefit for all.

The Enlightened View

Q: I find it fairly easy to experience the extraordinary sacredness of the moment when drinking a cup of tea, to be aware of the inherent selflessness of myself when I am alone. The trouble happens when I am confronted with other people’s anger, or pain, or even violence. So many of us in this world live in unstable situations. How do we remain in the moment? How do we experience the extraordinariness of these moments? How do we continue to act from a place of stillness when we are in overwhelming situations occurring in objective reality? How do I act from grace when I see someone I love tangled in their own limiting beliefs? In these situations, I find it very difficult not to react in habitual, often traumatized ways.

A: This is a big and important question, and beyond my ability to answer in the space of an email. I will, however, attempt to make a start. Spirituality is, of course, about much more than having moments of sacredness when in supportive and non-challenging environments, as nice and as enriching as these moments can be. The “goal” (if I may use such a word) of spirituality is to be realized, clear, and fearless enough to meet and respond to the tremendous challenges of life from a revolutionary perspective.

Someone like Jesus had far from an easy life. It was not a life predominately defined by resting in the bliss of being, but of engaging with the sorrows of life from a revolutionary standpoint of wisdom, love, and fearlessness. Being rooted in what he called the kingdom, or the enlightened view, was not for him an end in itself, but rather an inner condition from which to engage with the challenges of life.

To embody any degree of realization requires us to uncover and expose those remaining mental and emotional fixations that inhibit the spontaneous movement of wisdom and love within our lives. For most, this is no small task. It all starts by taking full responsibility for our own inner and outer lives, and noticing the ways in which our own fear, judgment, resentment, and confusion cloud our ability to respond to the challenges of life in a wise and appropriate way.

It has been my observation that many people involved in spirituality are waiting for some great spiritual experience to make everything in their lives clear and solve all of their problems for them. This is a bit of an overstatement but not all that uncommon to varying degrees. Instead of trying to remain in a state of stillness, or peace, or any other state when dealing with the challenges of life, we are better served by seeking to act and respond with wisdom, clarity, and openheartedness.

I suppose that the most direct answer to your question is to go deeper and investigate the causes of fear, anger, jealousy, and control within yourself. Then you will find it more obvious how to respond to these qualities when dealing with others. There is simply no other option than to uproot the causes of human suffering within ourselves if we are to manifest the incredible potential for wisdom and love that lie at the core of our being.

You are the world, the world is you. Now let’s all act on it. And by doing so, we become more and more clear, more wise, and more loving. It is not always easy, but it is the only thing worth doing. And it’s up to each of us to do it.

Excerpted from Adya’s book, Sacred Inquiry

© Adyashanti 2020

In one sense, part of our question-and-answer sessions is that you shoot your conceptual arrow. It’s like we meet out in a big meadow, and you’re at one end, and I’m at this end. And the Truth is the meadow. The Truth is the space. The Truth is the presence that is permeating the whole thing. But if you don’t get that, then you shoot a conceptual arrow: “This is what I think. This is my question.” And if you shoot a conceptual arrow, I shoot one back. And if we are lucky, both of those arrows meet tip to tip. And if they meet tip to tip in mid-air, they destroy each other. 

There is yet another invitation and opportunity: to see the space that’s left when those two concepts mutually destroy each other. And if you don’t get it, then you'll lob another conceptual arrow: “Well, what about this?” And so we just shoot, and we hit tip to tip—boom. Really what it’s about is that mutual destruction of concepts, of viewpoints, of world views. And all that’s left is the consciousness that it’s happening in. That’s the Truth; that’s where all the wisdom is. It's not in your conceptual arrow, and it’s not in mine. Mine is just meant to hit yours. 

It’s just like these words—they are not true. They are just meant to hit concepts within you. And maybe they will hit tip to tip and reveal space. Of course, that was there before we ever lobbed the concepts. Before we shot the conceptual arrows, that state of consciousness was there, because that’s what we are shooting the arrows in. The arrows can be many things: They can be our questions. They can be our demand that it should be this way or that way. Whatever it is, we are just shooting it right through consciousness. Consciousness doesn’t care. Innocence doesn’t mind. 

But when those concepts hit each other and destroy each other, that’s the welcoming, the opportunity to wake up as that space that all this is happening in. When we see that, we stop putting importance in our conceptual arrows, because we already are what all our concepts are looking for. You already are the space in which the questions come.  That space is what you are—that’s the end of it.

So any spiritual talk, any spiritual book, any sutra, is just a conceptual arrow. But what does the mind do? The mind grabs the arrow and thinks the Truth is in the arrow, and it starts to look at it, and it starts to collect them and put them in its little arrow package. When it gets a lot of arrows, it starts to feel safe. It has a lot of ammunition to defend itself against everything. And that’s what happens until it doesn’t. That’s how the mind operates. It’s a collecting of conceptual arrows.

But it doesn't matter how many arrows you have. Life is always shooting another one. And life has better aim than you do. It's always fracturing you. Have you ever noticed? So the blessing is seeing that it's not about what conceptual arrows we have, what conceptual demands we have, what emotional demands we are making upon this moment, whether those are met or unmet. It's really not about that. When we see that, then we stop fracturing ourselves. We stop looking for ourselves in the concepts or even in some emotional experience.

We start to see this innocent state of being that exists prior to all of that. And it's in the middle of all of that as well, and after all of that. That state of being is what you are. That's the awakening that's what you are, because then you don't have a relationship with it anymore. You are not objectifying it somewhere else. Just to let go of your demand for this state of silence, to let go of any demand you might have upon it for just half a second, that's all it takes for it to reveal itself, to wake up.

From Adyashanti's Santa Cruz, CA Meeting, March 2001

© Adyashanti 2001

Truth is only discovered in the moment.
There is no truth that can be carried over
to the next moment, the next day, the next year.
Memory never contains truth, only what is past, dead, gone.

Truth comes into the non-seeking mind fresh and alive.
It is not something you can carry with you, accumulate, or hold onto.

Truth leaps into view when the mind is quiet, not asserting itself.
You cannot contain or domesticate truth, for if you do, it dies instantly.

Truth prowls the unknown waiting for a gap in the mind’s activity.
When that gap is there, the truth leaps out of the unknown into the known.

Instantly you comprehend it and sense its sacredness.
The timeless has broken through like a flash of lightning
and illuminated the moment with its presence.

Truth comes to an innocent mind as a blessing and a sacrament.
Truth is a holy thing because it liberates thought from itself
and illumines the human heart from the inside out.

© Adyashanti 2009 

True meditation has no direction or goal. It is pure wordless surrender, pure silent prayer. All methods aiming at achieving a certain state of mind are limited, impermanent, and conditioned. Fascination with states leads only to bondage and dependency. True meditation is abidance as primordial awareness.

True meditation appears in consciousness spontaneously when awareness is not being manipulated or controlled. When you first start to meditate, you notice that attention is often being held captive by focus on some object: on thoughts, bodily sensations, emotions, memories, sounds, etc. This is because the mind is conditioned to focus and contract upon objects. Then the mind compulsively interprets and tries to control what it is aware of (the object) in a mechanical and distorted way. It begins to draw conclusions and make assumptions according to past conditioning.

In true meditation all objects (thoughts, feelings, emotions, memories, etc.) are left to their natural functioning. This means that no effort should be made to focus on, manipulate, control, or suppress any object of awareness. In true meditation the emphasis is on being awareness; not on being aware of objects, but on resting as primordial awareness itself. Primordial awareness is the source in which all objects arise and subside.

As you gently relax into awareness, into listening, the mind’s compulsive contraction around objects will fade. Silence of being will come more clearly into consciousness as a welcoming to rest and abide. An attitude of open receptivity, free of any goal or anticipation, will facilitate the presence of silence and stillness to be revealed as your natural condition.

As you rest into stillness more profoundly, awareness becomes free of the mind’s compulsive control, contractions, and identifications. Awareness naturally returns to its non-state of absolute unmanifest potential, the silent abyss beyond all knowing.

SOME COMMON QUESTIONS ABOUT MEDITATION

Q. It seems that the central instruction in True Meditation is simply to abide as silent, still awareness. However, I often find that I am caught in my mind. Is it OK to use a more directed meditation like following my breath, so that I have something to focus on that will help me to not get lost in my mind?

A. It is perfectly OK to use a more directed technique such as following your breath, or using a simple mantra or centering prayer, if you find that it helps you to not get lost in thought. But always be inclined toward less and less technique. Make time during each meditation period to simply rest as silent, still awareness. True Meditation is progressively letting go of the meditator without getting lost in thought.

Q. What should I do if an old painful memory arises during meditation?

A. Simply allow it to arise without resisting it or indulging in analyzing, judging, or denying it.

Q. When I meditate I sometimes experience a lot of fear. Sometimes it overwhelms me and I don’t know what to do.

A. It is useful when experiencing fear in meditation to anchor your attention in something very grounding, such as your breath or even the bottoms of your feet. But don’t fight against the fear because this will only increase it. Imagine that you are the Buddha under the Bodhi tree, or Christ in the desert, remaining perfectly still and unmoved by the body-mind’s nightmare. It may feel very real but it is really nothing more than a convincing illusion.

Q. What should I do when I get an insight or sudden understanding of a situation during meditation?

A. Simply receive what is given with gratitude, without holding onto anything. Trust that it will still be there when you need it.

Q. I find that my mind is spontaneously forming images, almost like a waking dream. Some of them I like, while others are just random and annoying. What should I do?

A. Focus attention on your breathing down in your belly. This will help you to not get lost in the images of the mind. Hold the simple intention to rest in the imageless, silent source prior to all images, thoughts, and ideas.

© 2011 by Adyashanti. All rights reserved.