20 Minute Meditation: Special Teaching on Being and Doing

Make sure you're not waiting for anything so that you're completely present. Not waiting for me to add anything to this moment, not waiting for anything to be added to this moment, so that this moment is completely self contained, fulfilled, fulfilling. Not waiting for anything is for many people something that we very rarely experience. Occasionally, accidentally, when a certain desire has just been met, and then for brief moments, they are not waiting for anything to be added. But most people, most of the time, are never fully present. They are always more focused on some future moment, whether it's a minute from now or an hour from now, or tomorrow, or next week or next year, or even just getting ready to go somewhere to do something. All the intervening, it's always your entire life is an intervening period. The arriving is just very little, because then you wait for the next thing, you look to the next thing. It's all a journey. But if you are excessively focused on the destination, then you miss 99% of your life, because the destination, the arriving at the destination is, is the end of this very little. There now what the habit is. If the habit, the mind habit, is not to be present, you can't even appreciate the destination, very briefly perhaps. And then because of the underlying mindset of ignoring, denying, diminishing, devaluing the present moment, you can't even appreciate your destination in whatever form it arrives. The achievement, the destination, the end of a task, the outcome. And so you spend your entire life on a journey to some place that always changes, but always some future place, some future time that never really arrives. The fulfillment that the future moment promises is always very short lived. So the Buddha saw that already. Perhaps the most famous statement of the Buddha, one of the most well known statements, is in order to go beyond suffering, he says, because he says suffering is a normal state of human beings, suffering in a wider sense, it doesn't necessarily always mean you're in intense agony, but a sense of dissatisfaction, a sense of unfulfillment, unhappiness in whatever form. An underlying discontent is usually connected with this waiting for something to take you out of the present moment. All that is what the Buddha calls suffering. So unhappiness, non fulfillment, misery, including of course, extreme forms of unhappiness. Minor forms of unhappiness, like slight irritation, the Buddha would say, is already a form of suffering. Anger is a form of suffering, although it's not recognized as such by the ego, because the ego thrives on anger. But if you observe what anger does to your body, then you will know that it is a form of suffering. So the Buddha recognized that most humans are in that non satisfying state, most of the time unhappy. Except, as I said, when some desire has just been fulfilled and then there is a brief moment of ah, and then the next thing comes. So the Buddha says, life is suffering, and in order to go beyond suffering, you have to let go of desire. Now, does that not imply that you would no longer do anything? You let go of desire? For what reason would you engage in any activity? Wouldn't you just sit there, nothing whatever? There would be no civilization, because nobody has no desire to create anything or do anything. I don't think he was talking about it in that sense, but it can be misunderstood easily. When he used the term desire, he was talking about, a better translation might be craving. This, needing the next moment, needing to get away from this unsatisfying present, this pull, a longing, a craving that manifests in different ways. Craving for sensual pleasure, sex, and of course, adding things to your psychological sense of self. Obtain this or that, get this or that. I must have this, I must obtain it. So the desire is that state of craving. And in order to get rid of the dissatisfaction, humans then engage in activity in order to free themselves from an unsatisfying state. That is how many humans, most humans operate. But whatever they obtain, they're not happy. Doesn't make them happy, except very briefly. It doesn't free them from unhappiness, except very briefly. But we need to realize that craving is not the only possible motivating force behind action, behind doing. You can have an intention to create something, to engage in some kind of activity. You have an intention to do this or to do that. It does not necessarily mean that there is this force of good craving behind it, which ultimately is an extreme dissatisfaction with what is, and looking for some future satisfaction, something that will be. But if you create, if he has an intention to create something, it does not necessarily imply, then there is also a craving. So these are two modalities of creating in this world. One is you create because your state of consciousness is a state of dissatisfaction and lack of and neediness. And so you engage in activities in order to either cover up that state, desensitize yourself to the underlying pain, emotional pain, physical, even mental, or to the belief that something or someone can free you from that state of lack and dissatisfaction. And so that's how craving arises. And many things in this world are created out of that state of consciousness. And then a kind of civilization arises. But it's not a happy civilization. It's a civilization where millions of people are basically unhappy, needing medication to keep going. Millions upon millions need medication just to continue to function in this life. Because they haven't been told that another state of consciousness is possible for every human. Nobody at school, nobody told them at university, nobody told them in the media, nobody tells them, or very rarely might get in accidentally. But it's normal to live like that. You see it everywhere. In every movie, people live like that, the characters in the movies. But there is another way. And it does not mean that you no longer engage in activities, that you no longer create things you no longer do. But it means that the activity, the motivating force behind your activity, is no longer a state of neediness or dissatisfaction. Because if it is, then the activity is stressful. I need to get there. I'm not there yet. I need to get there. And stress is not a happy way to live. It's not a skillful way, as the Buddhists would call it. It's not a skillful way to lead your life, to be motivated by unhappiness, neediness, dissatisfaction, a sense of not enough, never enough, never have enough, never am enough. And whatever you achieve or get, always get. Well, that's not quite. There's always something that very quickly comes in that is another form of suffering. No matter what you achieve, fame, wealth, you achieve it for a while, you're elated, and then, oh, you can see it has a huge downside, not that fulfilling at all. So in other words, doing, acting, manifesting, creating is not enough. It's only one part of the equation. It's only one half of the whole. And what's the other half? If doing is only one half, and your life will remain unfulfilled because you're not aware of that there is another dimension other than the doing, then you get lost in the doing, consumed by the doing, consumed even by thinking, and lost in your thinking, because thinking is also doing. So what's the other part? We only have One half is the doing, the other is the being, being. If you lose awareness of being, then you are basically lost in doing. And only if you become aware of being, which is present, then you can act, you can do from that foundation of that rootedness in being, then an intention can arise. You can delight in creating something, enjoy doing something, rather than being excessively focused on the outcome, what you want to achieve through the doing. When you're rooted in being, then you can act while you're in connectedness with being. And then the action is joyful, it's invigorating. In other words, you begin to enjoy the journey. Every step of the journey. It's all the journey. The arriving is relatively meaningless. And then you can create. You can manifest whatever it is that wants to be manifested through you. But you become a powerful manifesto. And why are you powerful? Because you're not needy anymore. You don't need whatever it is that your intention is to manifest. You don't need it for your happiness. You don't need it for your fulfillment. You don't need it to be who you are. Because you already have access to the dimension of being, the timeless dimension of consciousness itself, which is inherently fulfilling. That's the only true fulfillment. And that arises whenever you experience a cessation in the stream of thinking. For example, now you don't need to think while when I finish one sentence before I start speaking again, there's a gap in which you can be conscious, fully conscious, without any mental noise, without any thought, but just presence, just awareness. For example, now that's the portal into being, the dimension of being. So there's nothing happening there. There's no doing in being. There's just it.