The Point Is to Walk the Earth
El Punto Es Caminar la Tierra
A conversation about how meditation serves daily life, why the essential presence is always available even when it seems absent, and how the same tasks that once felt like drudgery become a source of joy.
The Point Is to Walk the Earth
A conversation about how meditation serves daily life, why the essential presence is always available even when it seems absent, and how the same tasks that once felt like drudgery become a source of joy.
Where does the maturity that comes from a spiritual or meditation practice actually develop?
That's where it can develop, manifest, and become real. In the end, it's really all about loving, about being more loving, about being more of a good person. My teacher used to say that to be a good person is the highest thing, and he would always add that it's not as easy as it sounds. If you asked him the meaning of life, he would say something like "to breathe," or "to have fun." Then he would point out that it's not as easy as it sounds, because if you go party every night, after a while you're not having much fun.
But this points to the other side of the work. Here in the meditation, I point to what is often missing, which is the work toward presence. If that presence is only experienced and known in an isolated part of our life, when we sit to meditate, then it stays confined. It needs to be developed somewhere, and this is one of the places. But it's not the ultimate answer.
Meditation as training for living
If life, metaphorically, is to walk the earth, then to sit and meditate is to do all the workouts so that walking the earth becomes more possible. But the point is to walk the earth. The point is to live with more well-being and in a more loving way. All of this spiritual work is the how. How do we develop in order to have more well-being and to be more loving?
The problem is that so many of the hows have become limited, and they fail. Psychology, self-help, all of the pointers to the how: if they exclude true spiritual work, they will fail. That's why religions have been so powerful. They have also become very toxic, because of how they've been appropriated, but the origin of them was powerful because they point to something. There is something that is possible and is real, and then there is also the how to live.
Presence and ethics in the teachings
If you look at the sayings of Jesus, he points to the kingdom of heaven being here now. That is presence. He would have been transmitting that, and people were completely taken by it. Then he would point to how to live. It was a radical change, which is why the shift from Judaism to Christianity was so radical: it was a change in the philosophy of life, and it had to do with ethics, with how to live. To turn the other cheek, for example, was a pointer, whereas before everything was an eye for an eye.
He embodied it from his heart. I think that's the difference. By the way, I'm not sure people understood "an eye for an eye" correctly. I've been told, though I don't know if this is right, that the original meaning was not "if you take out my eye, I take out yours," but that I get compensation for the loss of my eye.
Yes.
I could be mistaken, but the difference is that it was more law, more from the neck up: these are the proscriptions, this is what you must do and what you must not do. Whereas Jesus was closer to the way you're speaking. It changes in every situation, but the guiding principle comes from what we actually are.
From the heart, yes. It was the same with the Buddha. A lot of his words had to do with right action, right this, right that, all pointers to ethical and moral behavior. But then that gets turned into: unless you behave in this way, you will not know the kingdom. That is when it became more toxic. In Christianity, for example: if you don't do what I say you should do, God will punish you.
In other words, mind took over, like it always does. It's inevitable.
Yes. But it really is all about what happens in daily living, about how we live.
Intention and reactivity
It feels like it's all about intention. That's the word that keeps coming up for me, because things can come out cockeyed, and I can make the same mistake three hundred thousand times, but every time I didn't want to make that mistake. So it's not the outcome so much as the intention. Does that make sense?
Yes, but this is where the missing piece comes in. You can only react if there's no way to go underneath reactivity and stop it. If there's no way underneath, then all there is will be habitual, reactive behavior, and all the thinking about it or trying to stop it will be quite futile. The point, in the end, is to not react, but the how needs two sides. The side that is often missing is this work of meditation. Once you can settle into the presence that is before mind, then you can suppress reactive action and be present with the feelings from which reactivity comes. Then you are more free, and this is progressive: more and more free to not react, to be more loving, to be more of a good person.
For about a year and a half, I was meditating around two hours every day, sometimes more, sometimes less. Something happened to me, exactly what you're describing. But when the shift happened, I didn't want to meditate anymore. I don't know what that's about. That's when I intensified going to a teacher and listening. It's interesting: when I meditate on my own, it feels totally different from when you're present and guiding it. So I have this inner debate. I don't feel much when I meditate on my own; it feels pointless. But this is only since the shift happened. The desire to meditate on my own kind of disappeared. I don't know if it's resistance. I don't like to force myself, but sometimes it's good to gently beckon.
Not throwing out the baby with the bathwater
I suspect that what's happening is that there may have been a shift where something old was no longer wanted, and that's a good thing. But for the new to come, there might be a need for some time, and a need not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The key that I heard you say is that you don't experience, when meditating on your own, what you experience in this group or with me present. I would say: explore that. It doesn't have to feel the same, because something happens with group energy. But there is still something you can explore, and that gap will become smaller.
What you're sensing when you're in this group, the most important aspect of the meditation, is always present, whenever you are doing whatever you're doing. So my proposal is to be curious about what that is, and to see how you can discover it on your own as well. Not only on your own, because then it could be interpreted as "I need to find out on my own, so I shouldn't get close to a group or a teacher, I need to develop this independence." I don't believe that. It's always an opportunity to be in presence with somebody else, but also to explore how you can start discovering it on your own, even if it's a few minutes a day, until it becomes a kind of second nature.
Presence in ordinary moments
You're waiting for a bus, or you're drying yourself after a shower. Moments like that are very habitual because they're repetitive. This is very Zen: how you come out of the shower, the moment you're drying yourself with a towel, how can you take that minute to explore what is there that is the same as when you're here in this group, or when I'm guiding a meditation? You can find, more and more, that there's something essential that's there too.
In a sense, it's a hypothesis. My teacher always said to trust him and to trust his mind over our own when there was a conflict. If I thought something and he said something and there was disagreement, I was to trust his mind over mine. I think that was great, but I prefer to say: trust the proposal, and experiment yourself.
I hear you.
The proposal is that there is something, the most important thing you experience here, that keeps you wanting to come back, and it is always present no matter what's happening in your life. It's like a hypothesis, because to you it's not yet true.
Not true to me? Oh, that I don't experience it.
You experience a discrepancy. When you're in the group with me guiding, and when you're meditating on your own, there's a gap. It's not the same. So to you, the experience is that there's a difference. And I'm saying there's something that is the same, and it's there. So the hypothesis I offer, rather than a belief for you to buy into, is that the most essential thing is there when you're meditating on your own. You just need to find it. And we can talk about ways to explore how to find it.
A side effect, not a goal
It's never about something you achieve. Earlier I was talking about the mind and the muscle, but that's a side effect of doing this. You don't grow the brain synapse changes; that happens on its own. If I lift weights, my muscles grow. I don't grow the muscles. I just do the exploration of weightlifting. In the same way, the focus is on exploring the hypothesis that nothing is missing. The essential is always present. Try to discover it. Even when your mind says something's missing, "this isn't it, it's not the same, I don't feel good," find ways to explore that, to be present with it. See what's just mind. See what's just feeling or sensation. Stay with it. What is the space in which the difficult experience of discomfort is appearing? The more you make this an active exploration, the more a presence will start to flow, which you'll begin to discover as always there. It will start to have the flavor of the meditations you find with me, or with whomever.
The lamp
This is what is pointed to as the teacher lighting the flame in the student. The metaphor is that you have a lamp, and your lamp is off. The teacher has a lamp with the fire burning. You come, your lamp lights, and now you go with your lamp lit. That's a metaphor from probably thousands of years ago. My teacher would say that as soon as you leave, as soon as you cross the door, when we would sit with him in his house, the moment you walk out that door you forget everything. The lamp lights up, you go away, and it starts to dim, dim, dim, until it goes off. Then you come back and it lights up, until at some point you learn how to keep it lit.
But it's all a metaphor. I'm pointing to something that's already there. There's already a lamp that's lit, and you are there with your eyes closed, not seeing the light. That's the point, until you start to learn: actually, it's there. It's there whenever I look. The light on the lamp is burning. Then it becomes something so obvious and always there.
What belongs only to the group
There's another aspect. I was pointing to the most essential thing being the same. But there are aspects that have to do with certain sensations of group energy that will only happen in a group. The sensation of swimming in an ocean only happens when you're swimming in an ocean. If you're walking in a forest, it's not going to feel like swimming in the ocean. Similarly, when you're sitting in a group with a teacher, there will be a sensation, or a bunch of sensations, that only happen then. But those aren't the important ones. The important thing is something else, more subtle, that starts to become recognized.
I just want to say that you're really good at verbalizing and articulating this.
Thank you. It's all meant to help or serve your process. That's what's most gratifying to me.
It's really helpful. To be able to verbalize it makes it more real.
And it's very, very available. That's the part that's hard to communicate, because it is being. Whenever you are experiencing anything, it is required for there to be being. The problem is that it has become so overlooked, precisely because it's always there, that you cannot recognize it. You only recognize things in contrast, when something comes and goes. We become so focused on what comes and goes as a thing. I see my hand, I don't see my hand. I look at a tree, I don't look at a tree. It becomes a thing that I can see and locate, and when I don't see it, I can remember it. But what we're pointing to here is so essential that there's no way to contrast it with anything in order to recognize it, because it's not a thing.
Maybe this is where the meditation comes in, because the mind needs to be quiet enough to just receive what is always there.
The ocean and the fish
Yes. And what is always there is pointed to as space, or emptiness, or being. The kingdom of heaven is that. It's what the metaphor of the ocean points to, versus the wave or the drop that falls into the ocean. There's the metaphor of two fish who meet. One asks the other, "Where is the ocean?" The other says, "What is that? I don't know." The first says, "Well, I'm looking for the ocean." The other says, "I don't know what that is." So the fish swims away, looking for the ocean, determined to find it.
How is the fish ever going to know the ocean? Well, the other fish meets a different fish, who says, "The ocean? This is the ocean. You're in it. It's everything, it's everywhere." "What do you mean?" It can't know the ocean, because it doesn't know not-ocean. Only if you take it out of the water does it say, "Oh, that's the ocean." But that's where the metaphor fails, because you can't leave being. You can't get out of being in order to go into being and know it as a thing. If the ocean were infinite, if it were everything and everywhere, literally the whole universe, then it would be a better metaphor, because you couldn't go out of it. And even then it's still a metaphor, because it's something that is experienced, isn't it? It's part of experience. This is before experience.
The noumenal and the phenomenal
So it's also referred to as the noumenal versus the phenomenal. The phenomenal is what you see, hear, sense, taste, touch, receive, imagine, what the mind creates: the sounds, the images, even the space. All of that is phenomenal, and that's not it. What is left, if you take all of that out, is the noumenal, and that is being. That's what I'm pointing to with the word "being." Someone else would use a different word. It's just language, semantics.
Then the metaphor of the lamp is this: the one who knows being, who is consciously aware of being, versus the one who is unaware of being but still is being. The lamp, the fire, is the knowing of it. If you want to be really precise, it's the remembering of it, the realizing of it. That's why it's referred to as a realization or a recognition. It is not the achieving of something that is not there. It is the recognition of that which is always there.
What an amazing universe. It's so great for you to share it, and so great for us to receive it. It's not a burden for you; on the contrary, it's such a great feeling.
On the contrary. It's what is most effortless of everything that I do, and most enjoyable.
And the effortlessness of it is what makes the difference for me. It's a beautiful thing. It's transformative. It feels really amazing.
That's very new to me, and it was quite a discovery to experience how effortless it is. It's a whole new way. So many things started to make sense over the years with my teacher, understanding why he was doing what he was doing, a lot of the things he said, and that kind of relationship. There's something so beautiful in simply sharing it and being of service.
The one thing and the endless thing
It is the most important thing, and it's becoming, in a sense, almost the only one. Beyond living and enjoying my own personal life, sharing this is what is meaningful. There's the whole other side, which is my own learning and growth, the part I refer to as being a good person. That's something that is never-ending. My teacher would call it waking up. I only catalyze that growth, but it's not the end or the point.
Waking up does make a great difference, because it makes the growth a joy, pretty much constantly, versus what it was before, which was a burden. The burden of growing up, the burden of working on things. My teacher had me read The Myth of Sisyphus, because that's how I was feeling. I was about nineteen when he made me read it. The gist is of a man to whom a god gives the task of pushing a boulder up a hill, dropping it on the other side, then grabbing it and pushing it up again, doing that for eternity.
That, to me, is mind. That's what mind is: doing things mechanically, without the inner spirit or the inner truth of it.
For me, the experience before waking up was pushing the boulder up the hill, dropping it, pushing it up and dropping it, and it was miserable, pointless. After waking up, the experience is pushing the boulder up the hill, dropping it, pushing it up and dropping it. But it's joyful.
But do you actually experience it as pushing something up the hill and having it come down again? It doesn't sound like it from where you're coming.
Chop wood, carry water
I know, but it is, I would say yes. Not everything, but what used to be miserable is now, the very same thing, joyful. Think of washing dishes. This is very Zen. What do they say in Zen? Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. What's the difference? Before, it's, "This sucks. What's the point? This is heavy, I'm tired." And now: there's no point, it's heavy, I'm tired, and I enjoy this.
Yes.
And "enjoy" isn't quite the right word.
I'm alive.
There you go. There's something about being. Chop wood, carry water: it's so beautiful. I'm so alive. There's just so much being. Push the boulder up the hill, watch it go down, grab it again, push it up. Don't children do that all the time?
I was just going to say, I see a child, just the wow of now.
Exactly. My nephew is down here at the beach, and there's a rocky mound, maybe seven or eight feet tall. We bought him a beach ball. What does he do? He grabs it, climbs, he's three years old, he falls, grabs it again, climbs, manages to get to the top, drops it, runs down, grabs it, pushes it up, drops it, and he's having a blast.
I want to meet this guy. I want to watch him and learn from him. He sounds like a great teacher.
The point is, you were probably doing that kind of thing as a child too. So it's just something that was lost, that really isn't lost. It's just so obvious to a child. We got used to it, and we think it's not enough. Waking up is just realizing that it's the most beautiful, valuable thing, which is being, to be. Even words like "being" and "being alive" are still not it.
Causeless joy
The joy just emanating from within. How do you describe it? It's not a thing that I got. There are no circumstances. It's just causeless joy. It's bliss, it's just that. And what I'm getting, more and more, is that it's what we are. It's nothing to attain. It's just what we are. It's amazing. So it's wonderful to hear you, to hear the content, but also where it's coming from.
Another way I can point to it is with an image that really resonates with me. The whole universe is moving and changing constantly. It has never been exactly as it is right now, and never will be. The experience you're having right now has never been, and will never repeat. It's the contemplation that you are experiencing something directly, personally, that I am not, that no one in the whole of the universe is experiencing exactly as you're experiencing it right now. And you will never experience it again, and could never have experienced it before. That is the most unique, precious thing that exists. And that is always true, at every moment.
I never heard it said that way. That's amazing. So you can actually see it as a unique gift. It isn't just a concept. You can experience it right now.
And it's everything. What your mind is doing, this cable for the headphones I'm looking at, the computer, you, the whole thing. The whole thing is never going to be exactly as it is right now. It's constantly moving, constantly unique, with a certain perfection, because it is so impermanent. It's pointed to as something that's being destroyed and created every instant.
That's the Hindu image.
From the absolute back to life
You could see that as the most beautiful, most precious thing. That's where I can communicate the love of it. We can also point to the presence that all of it comes from, and that can bring us to knowing what is pointed to as the absolute: the unchanging, what is outside of time and space. But once that is known, it gives us the freedom to fully appreciate and be immersed in life as it is, fully invested in the preciousness of being, in this case this human experience, and fully free to develop as much as I can in truth and love. Every moment is this wonder of the most unique thing that never has been and never will be again as it is.
It's like life, whatever you want to call it, is one big kaleidoscope, constantly shifting, fascinating, beautiful. But it's a hologram: we're it. It's us. That's mind-blowing. Totally mind-blowing. Thank you.
A pleasure.
Beautiful.
Have a lovely day, and a lovely night.