Awake in This Life

When the Buddha is gone, look to the Dharma as your teacher. Make the practice your teacher. The Dharma and the Sangha will be your teacher.

—The Buddha

Do not shout thy prayer publicly, nor yet speak it low in secret, but seek between these a middle way.

—The Koran

I will now close my eyes, I will stop my ears, I will turn away my senses from their objects, I will even efface from my consciousness all the images of corporeal things; or at least, because this can hardly be accomplished, I will consider them as empty and false; and thus, holding converse only with myself, and closely examining my nature, I will endeavor to obtain by degrees a more intimate and familiar knowledge of myself.

—Rene Descartes

When we begin to integrate wisdom with compassionate activity in conscious ways, we practice. Usually we assume that our spiritual practices need to happen only on our meditation cushion, or in our church or synagogue, or on our prayer rug. While all of these circumstances can help support an opening to the view atop the Mountain of Spirit, limiting our spiritual connection to the forms and ceremonies of the Path diminishes our connection with the Empty, Spirit-infused reality that is our whole life. On the other hand, if we can see that Spirit is always already here with us and everything else all the time and that we are never separate from any of it, then our entire life can become a deliberate manifestation of Spirit. As we do this, we come to realize that Spirit is never only “out there,” listening or talking to us from a place separate from us. Instead, we must uncover within ourselves the Knowing that Spirit is exactly what is both listening and doing the talking as us, as this very moment. In other words, there is nothing that is not Spirit in action. If we operate, therefore, in a way that puts Spirit or any of its divine grace outside any part of our experience, we will forever limit ourselves to lives of separation. This is the ego’s realm, oriented perpetually from its erroneously perceived sense of lack. Living from this place of lack can only work to inhibit the full experience and expression of the freedom that Spirit always delivers us in infinite abundance.

In order for us to receive this gift, we must practice opening ourselves to its offering. This means nothing other than consciously engaging each thing that arises in our awareness with total relaxation in both mind and body. If we can look at our total relaxation as a manifestation of stillness in body and mind, then we can begin to realize a profound and limitless source of power. Real relaxation means we do not resist what is happening either in our minds or in our bodies. This absence of resistance allows for a letting go of our habitual drives, thus opening us to stillness. We stop clinging to judgments and other scripts authored by the ego, while at the same time we face everything and avoid nothing. This is what an intimate meeting of life is, and it happens the moment we can slow down to the point of consciously surrendering to exactly what is happening right now.

In my experience, some of the most memorable moments of this kind of quietude came in the early morning when I would sit in meditation with a large group of other practitioners. I can recall initially sitting on my cushion with a chattering mind, only to watch it slow down over the course of several minutes of silence. After the initial period of zazen, we got up for a few minutes of walking meditation, and then we would sit back down again for a second period of zazen. Like clockwork, the second sitting gave rise to a deep relaxation that lacked any kind of resistance or want. It was as if someone had shut off a noisy fan that had been buzzing in my head and suddenly I could recognize the silence underneath everything—a silence that was always there, just covered up by the noise of my mental activity.

Even in the midst of great activity, this stillness is present, and it can show up whenever we are truly still. Stillness, like Spirit, is never separate from any aspect of either our circumstance or our Ultimate Life. In fact, stillness is the actual felt presence of just this Now, as well as the infinite Emptiness that is the source of all things. Stillness is our letting go into silent Awareness. Stillness is the surrender to Peace. It is also the groundless ground, the pathless path, and the fruition of every spiritual quest for the deeply felt oneness with absolutely everything in the Universe.