The end of the seeker

Back when I was a spirituality junkie (which wasn’t that long ago), I was endlessly fascinated by Buddhism. It had a rigour and seriousness I desperately craved, while being the more “scientific” of religions - there was a technique and no blind belief was required of you to be on the path. It started with one 10-day Vipassana sit which then snowballed into one sit every year. “I need this for my sanity”, I would whisper under my breath as I completed the application form for the next course. 10 days of silence, no contact with the outside world, 10+ hours of meditation per day, waking up at 4 am and battling backaches from all that sitting. 10 days of righteous and pious suffering so that I could go out into the world and feel like I’m better than all these “sleeping people trapped in the matrix”.

I tried hard to get into the scriptures but there was no pull - I was quite happy knowing what I learnt from the Vipassana evening discourses. Each day we’d get a small yet sobering dose of “you must work hard, maybe thousands of lifetimes later you’ll awaken, but you must work hard now”, and I’d shut my eyes harder and concentrate more. The self-flagellateion program, ah yes. Very noble - please rinse and repeat.

Until last year at my last Vipassana sit - on day 7, I simply couldn’t meditate. More self-flagellation. More dreams and images of an enlightened life, more chanting “I will practice until I’m free” in my head. No dice.

Something was wrong.

After a lot of struggling, I stopped trying and relaxed.

And then it became clear.

There simply was no-one to meditate.

I would’ve laughed if it didn’t feel like I was in hell.

The only scripture in Buddhism I remember clearly is the Flower Sermon - a wordless transmission of “direct knowing” where the Buddha picks up a flower and smiles. One of his students Mahakashyapa, “gets” it and also smiles. The Buddha was able to know the flower’s “tathata” - such-ness, that- ness, is-ness. The underlying true nature of the flower and the recognition that the flower and him share that possibly caused that smile, but I digress, those are stories.

“I” am a bunch of positively reinforced personality traits I picked up over the years - what a fraud.

With it, there’s automatic thinking about how this act fits into the “I” story and how I’m being perceived by the people around me.

Without it, the flowers and cats and the sky and trees and “me” continue our joyful silent game.