The Master
You don’t need a spiritual master. You don’t need to sit at the feet of a guru to find satori, or enlightenment.
If you want to know — to directly experience — a spiritual master, you needn’t look any further than the physical form in which you appear to reside. You call it “my body”.
MY body…notice that you don’t call it “me” or “I”. That’s because you’re not your body, as famously said by Nisargadatta Maharaj. What you are, in truth, is something more fundamental than the fingers at the end of its arm, than the eyes on its face, than the hair growing on its head.
Who is the one who observes this physical body? Who is it who observes everything that your body perceives? Can you sit so quietly, in such stillness, that you can sense the observer of all the sensations which you experience in this body?
If your body was “you”, wouldn’t you be the one driving it? Wouldn’t you be in control? In fact, you are a slave to the body that you inhabit. This body has its own consciousness. When it is hungry, you give it food. When it is thirsty, you give it water. When it is tired, it falls asleep. When it needs to poo, well, you listen…promptly. When it gets sick, you give it rest.
It’s easy to think that your body is YOU, that YOU are in the driver’s seat, until you eat some bad fish, or until you haven’t slept in three days. Then it becomes obvious that you are simply a servant of this physical form. You are a witness, not a participant.
The personality that you’ve spent your life creating does everything it can to resist, to change, and to control the physical form in which you reside. You muffle burps, choke back tears, swallow anger, smile through gritted teeth, suppress the need for rest by consuming stimulants like coffee. Everything possible to fetter the natural flow of the body in order to fit into a mold deemed “proper” by a society which you did not create. Resist, resist, resist. Change, change, change. Control, control, control.
There is no better reminder of the slave you truly are than when you’re doing everything you can to hold back your impending diarrhea (and trying to play it cool) while your date drives you home. I speak from experience.
You are a slave to this physical form.
Does that truth make you feel anxious? Out of control? Does it drum up defensive thoughts wanting to prove me wrong? As well, it should.
But there’s a gift hiding here. THE gift.
You are residing within a spiritual master — a guru — if only you’ll open your eyes to it. Your body is an enlightened sage, and you have direct access to it. Lucky you!
Taoist sages sang the praises of wu wei, or effortless action…sometimes referred to as “non-action”. It’s not called “non-action” because nothing happens, but because the happenings occur with no trying, no pushing, no forcing on the part of the “me”. Wu wei is…effortless.
What is more wu wei than the heart beating inside your chest? What is more wu wei than the food digesting in your belly? What is more wu wei than the landscape tapestry that your eyes are perceiving? What is more wu wei than surrendering to a desperately needed night’s sleep? What is more wu wei than drinking in a pleasant fragrance (or not-so-pleasant as the case may be, at times) which lingers in the air?
Do your thoughts arise before or after the actions taken by your body? Did you make the choice to read this or is your mind merely retroactively justifying the body’s wu wei with its thoughts and ideas?
Are you sure?
Have you ever really paid close attention? Have you ever really investigated this with a discerning eye? Or have you been assuming all along that you know the right answer?
You don’t need to go to a sage or a guru to experience enlightenment. You needn’t look any further than the perceived bounds of your body.
You are consciousness experiencing consciousness. Consciousness (awareness) resting within a perceived physical form…which itself, too, is consciousness.
You are life nested within itself, observing and witnessing another aspect of itself. How much more spiritual, how much more awake, does it get than that?
But the conditioned mind, the created personality, resists the truth of wu wei in the body. The mind is the enemy of enlightenment…the only true barrier.
Just look at your dog or your cat…or even a small child. We adore them precisely because they express this wu wei so perfectly. Unhindered. Unrestricted. They do exactly what arises, exactly when and as it arises. They do not hesitate, do not worry what others will think, do not fear judgment. They are free.
Now, ask yourself: are you? Are you free? Truly free?
If not, why? The answer is your mind.
The lifetime you’re spending inside this body is an immense opportunity. It’s an opportunity to sit at the feet (or, rather, inside the feet) of a sage carrying ancient wisdom which cannot be uttered by words. It’s an opportunity to allow — to witness — the body’s wu wei in all its immortal glory.
To watch what arises, to let it come. To be with it…fully. To give yourself to it…completely. To trust it…wholly. Without the interference of the mind. Without trying to make it different.
That is the immense gift of this life. A gift that few take advantage of.
Is it enlightenment you seek? Salvation from your suffering? Abiding joy? True oneness with God?
It’s already here…nearer than the tip of your nose.
