Forty-four essays. Each one points at something the traditions have been pointing at for thousands of years.
None of this is mine. I have only arranged what was already pointed at.
You can read them in order or not. They were written in order, but the order is not required.
The last four turn the rest inside out. You will know them when you find them.
Take whichever one calls.
I. The mind that thinks it is in charge
The mind has been running your life.
You did not choose your thoughts
The exhaustion of being someone
II. The search is the problem
The looking for it is what was in the way.
The seeker is the obstacle
Riding the ox while looking for the ox
The path that ends where it began
III. Looking for the looker
Every tradition has its own version of the same question.
Who is asking
The headless field
Not this, not this
Find the one who is reading this
IV. The watching that has no watcher
There is knowing happening. The knower cannot be found.
The watching that has no watcher
Awareness aware of itself
The light that does not need to be lit
V. Just this
What you were looking for is not somewhere else.
The present moment is not in time
Suchness
Nothing missing
VI. The sitting that isn't for anything
Effort is what obscures what effort is trying to reach.
The sitting that isn't for anything
Wu wei
The dial you have been turning
Effortless non-meditation
VII. The self as a story
The self is a sentence the mind repeats, not a thing that can be found.
The self as a sentence
The personality is weather
No one behind the eyes
VIII. Not two
Subject and object, self and world, are not two things.
Not two
The seer and the seen
The wave that thought it was separate
IX. Form is emptiness
Things are real and empty at once. This is not a contradiction.
The shape and the space
The rainbow
Empty of being just one thing
X. This life, not the next one
Liberation is not somewhere else.
This life, not the next one
Chop wood, carry water
There is nowhere to go
XI. Suffering is the bracing
The pain is not the problem. The argument with it is.
The bracing
Pain is not the problem, the argument with it is
What is left when you stop fighting
XII. Ordinary mind
The ordinary is what was being looked for the whole time.
The ordinary is what was being looked for
Your life is not a workshop
The breath that does itself
Just this
The other side
These four sit apart from the rest. They turn the project on itself.
I have no message
Thought is your enemy
There is no individual there at all
The search was the disease