Water Mind, Honey Mind

Great spiritual teachers have a way with words. Jesus, Buddha, Laozi, and countless others use the vernacular of their times to make eternal truths relevant to the context of this moment, this culture, and these challenges. One such teacher is Indian guru Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897-1981).

In a now classic collection of transcriptions of his talks called I Am That, a vivid portrait emerges of an ordinary man who, through a series of extraordinary experiences found himself in the role of spiritual teacher (guru) to seekers from all over the world. Nisargadatta never claimed special status, and assiduously avoided the trappings of spiritual stardom. He ran a humble tobacco shop in Mumbai, and received visitors in his tiny apartment above the store. A tape recorder preserved the dialogues, and I Am That was born.

            Nisargadatta taught non-duality, or Advaita Vedanta, the Hindu school of thought that claims that all is one. What sets him apart from other Vedanta teachers is the plain language and down-to-earth style of his message. While deeply indebted to his own guru, and respectful of the ancient lineage of which he is a part, his message was clear—teachers point the way, but in the end you are your own best guru. If we are one with the sacred ground of being, then we all carry within us that which we seek. Ceaselessly looking outside ourselves for wisdom only prolongs our confusion.

            “Gurus are like milestones,” he said. “It is natural to move from one to another. Each tells you the direction and the distance, while the sadguru, the eternal Guru, is the road itself. Once you realize that the road is the goal and that you are always on the road, not to reach a goal, but to enjoy its beauty and wisdom, life ceases to be a task and becomes natural and simple, in itself an ecstasy.” In an age when so many define themselves as “spiritual, but not religious” these words are like medicine. It’s okay to doubt, it’s okay to draw sustenance from different spiritual and religious sources, it’s okay to look back over your life and see a meandering path. Everywhere you went, and in every community you joined, you found milestones to mark the journey into the depths of your own authentic oneness.

            In one particularly striking image, Nisargadatta offers counsel to all of us who struggle with our meditation practice, and the persistent distractions of the thought-stream. Regarding our thoughts, Nisargadatta says, “Your very fighting them gives them life. Just disregard. Look through…It is disinterestedness that liberates. Don’t hold on, that is all. The world is made of rings. The hooks are all yours. Make straight your hooks and nothing can hold you.”

With the simple image of hooks and rings Nisargadatta quells our default addictive acquisitiveness—the strange habit we have of always holding onto everything as if we owned it. Simply straighten the hooks. Be deeply and intimately present with everything we love, but without the consciousness of ownership.

            In another image, Nisargadatta points to the possibility of true serenity available to us all. “The mind exists in two states: as water and as honey. The water vibrates at the least disturbance, while the honey, however disturbed, returns quickly to immobility.” As we move through this next busy week, reflect on your own reactivity to all of the triggers around us. Are we the water or are we the honey?

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All quotes from:

Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That, Translated by Maurice Frydman, Edited by Sudhakar S. Dikshit (Acorn Press: Durham, North Carolina, 1973)

[This piece was first published in my "A to Zen" column in the September/October 2023 edition of Unity Magazine, and is reproduced here with permission.]

Calling Off the Search

When on their 1987 masterpiece Joshua Tree U2 sang “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for” everyone knew exactly what they meant. We seem hard-wired to search, a behavior we no doubt learned hunting and gathering all around the world these last hundred thousand years. An unquenchable longing pushes us toward ever new horizons. We can’t stop.

We’re driven by the illusion that some new acquisition, some new lifestyle, some new understanding, some new something will transform our lives into shimmering palaces of wisdom and bliss. We’ll be finally, completely happy, and we won’t have to search anymore. But there’s just one problem: when we finally get what we want the restlessness lingers. We carry our confusion and neurosis with us into every new situation. Wherever you go, there you are. Different day, different job, different house, different marriage, same old suffering.

Some people even think that if they pack up and move to another town everything will change. In the recovery world that’s called “doing a geographical,” the desperate hope that we can shake loose our demons if we run fast and far enough. But they all hitch a ride – every single one of them. Our demons don’t live in the outer world – they’re within us. They are us.

When Dorothy awoke in her own bed after her mystical journey to Oz, she realized the truth – “There’s no place like home.” And we are always home. Not only can we not outrun our problems, turns out we also can’t outrun our solutions. We carry them all within.

This is why the paradigm of spiritual searching fails. How can we search for truth when not one of our steps leads away from it? As we chase from one explanation to the next, trading one ideology for another, we’re forever cast adrift on the surface: all our doctrines, theologies, and philosophies exist only at the level of thought. They are purely conceptual constructs. The unbreakable whole of life eludes concepts, words, and explanations. Leaving here and going there won’t make a difference. But slowing down, stopping, and opening up will.

There are no real, lasting solutions at the level of conceptual, theoretical, ideological thought. The menu is not the food. The map is not the place. To search through thought-systems for real transformation is like wandering through a market with no money to spend. You’re just looking around – you don’t get to have any of it.

There can never be real freedom or joy at the level of thought because thoughts are always about the past or the future. Only in the eternal presence of the Now is real freedom possible. And it is the work of all authentic spiritual practice to draw us into the present moment and out of our thought-abstractions. That’s what ritual is for. That’s what contemplative, centering prayer does. That’s what luminous, sacred music does. That’s what solitude in nature does. That’s what selfless, sacred service does. That’s what meditation does.

One of the most powerful reasons present-minded consciousness is so liberating is because fear withers in the bright light of the eternal present. Fear is by definition future-thinking. It’s imaging harmful future outcomes that have not and will not happen. Fear deals exclusively in the what if. What if I get cancer? What if I forget my lines? What if this plane crashes? And yet, here and now, we’re cancer-free, we remembered our lines, and the plane is still in the air. Coming into the present moment eliminates fear – it simply can’t survive here. Truth won’t let it.

Freedom from fear is found only in the now.

           When you come fully into this present moment you awaken into the realization that there is nothing you need, nothing you want, nothing you resent, and nothing you fear – you are safe, you are loved, and you are whole. The whole world could fall away and not even a ripple would cross the pool of the bottomless stillness in which you rest like a lily pad.

            And it is only from this stillness that you can return to the field of action and do the significant work that needs to be done, not from an egotistical stance (I’m here to save you), but with the humble heart of a servant (How can I help?)

            Of all the practices designed to bring us into the liberating present, none does so much so fast as meditation. Meditation is the art and science of slipping beneath the surface of the thought stream and sinking down into the silent depths beneath the waves. Nothing else so thoroughly and effectively liberates us from the grasp of our habitual over-thinking. In meditation we simply practice shifting into what Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita calls the Inner Witness, that still, silent presence within us. As we learn how to witness our thoughts instead of identifying with them a subtle shift occurs – we no longer are our thoughts. Instead, we watch our thoughts drift across the sky like clouds. We thought we were the clouds, but turns out we’re the sky – the boundless, spacious awareness in which thoughts arise and fade. And when we make this shift a subtle joyful peace washes over us. We go beyond the mere concepts of peace, wellness, and wisdom – we become peace, wellness, and wisdom.

            In the world’s wisdom traditions this is called embodiment, realization, awareness, or direct experience. It is not properly “knowledge,” because knowledge is conceptual. Embodied wisdom has nothing to do with knowledge, religion, theology, doctrine, ideology, beliefs, faith, scripture, dogma, ritual, liturgy, or anything rooted in the realm of conceptual thought. 

This is why searching for the truth always fails. The entire model of searching is based on a false premise. Truth is not something over there. How can you go out looking for something you already are? In his classic book I Am That Advaita Vedanta teacher Nisargadatta Maharaj put it this way: “You are universal. You need not and you cannot become what you are already. Having never left the house you are asking for the way home. Don’t rely on your mind for liberation. It is the mind that brought you into bondage. Go beyond it altogether. Enquire Who is ignorant, and ignorance will dissolve like a dream. The source of consciousness cannot be an object in consciousness. To know the source is to be the source.”

            Krishnamurti often warned his students about the perils of attachment to ideology and doctrine, or even teachers. Be wary, he said, of those who talk about the path. “Truth,” he said, “is a pathless land.” There is nothing to seek, and nowhere to go. Instead of seeking, slow down, go within and realize what you are and always have been.

Why I Meditate

I meditate because it frees me from the tyranny of my to-do list.

I meditate because twenty minutes on the cushion adds inestimable time and space to my day.

I meditate because when I honor my deepest calling, I feel every fiber of my being aligning into integrated harmony, a state I cannot create any other way.

I meditate because when I do I fall in love with the world and everything in it all over again.

I meditate because meditation is the great homecoming, the return to our authentic nature.

I meditate because in the stillness all of our interlocking systems -- intellect, emotion, energy, body, spirit -- return to their natural set-point and are restored to their ideal interrelationship.

I meditate because I'm a hedonist at core -- I'm drawn to the higher pleasures and the joy they afford.

I meditate because life is short and none of us has that much more time, and I might as well actually be here now instead of running madly through the echo chamber and hall of mirrors of my own conceptual madhouse.

I meditate because the world deserves the best possible version of myself; at core, all spiritual practice is world service.

I meditate because my greatest single contribution to world peace and enlightenment is to show up as awakened as possible.

I meditate because freedom, real freedom, is freedom from the tyranny of the thought stream.

I meditate because I'm drawn to the real, and find it every time in the silent boundless spaciousness beneath and between my thoughts.

I meditate because of the way love wells up through the cracks of my suffering when I hold still long enough to allow it.

I meditate because it is beautiful and subtle and profound.

I meditate because something deep within me asks me to.

I meditate because there is great and tremendous freedom in the word "yes."

I meditate because I can feel the darkness and fear dissipating when I do.

I meditate because. Just because.