Youtube recording: 04/20/2025
Meditation: MP3 Audio file
SanghaOfOne.com   

Welcome, everyone.
Lovely to be with you.

To explore,
to share,
to wonder,
to question,
to take a look together
freshly.

Our experience
is not in time.

In this moment,
does not appear in the mind,
does not appear in time.

The mind appears
in presence.

Time,
events,
thoughts appear
in that
which does not appear.
You are that,
that awareness.
Take a look.

Awareness,
knowingness is
the source.

What is the world-body-mind
without your knowingness,
without awareness,
without I.

I meaning being.
I, meaning that which is and cannot not be.

The silent,
aware presence.

So invite your mind
to rest,
to be transformed,
to be appeased
by the silence
which permeates these words.

Let things be as they are.
You may notice
the thinking muscle operating.

It’s okay.
Notice that you are that
which perceives it.
You are that within which
the thinking muscle operates.

You are the awareness of that.

And possibly,
you may not need to follow
the stream of thought
just to let it be.

Like the singing of the birds
or the breeze,
gentle breeze
flowing through.

There may be a tendency
to want to understand
or grasp or do something.

So maybe we can invite ourselves
to relax out of that,
to be without knowing,
to do nothing,
to let it be
without knowing what it is.

Let be.

You can turn your attention,
if it’s helpful,
to the breathing,
the breath,
the heartbeat.

Notice the spaciousness
surrounding it,
permeating the breath,
permeating the heartbeat.

There is nothing
you need to do
to be aware
because awareness is.

There’s no on and off switch.
There’s no dimmer.
When it comes to awareness.

From the mind’s perspective,
we assume that reality
refers to perceptions,
the senses:
perceiving a mountain.
The mountain is real
out there somewhere.
There is a real mountain.

We perceive a thought,
and there is the impression
that out there, somewhere,
there is a mind,
and within the mind,
there is a thought flying by
like a bird.

From the perspective of the mind,
we perceive sensation,
and we imagine that this sensation
is enveloped by your skin.
There is a skin,
body-mind-skin,
and inside that skin,
there is a sensation.

This real body
somewhere out there,
and I’m inside of the body,
and these sensations
are inside of me.

That’s from the mind’s perspective.
Such a wide imagination,
wide and wild imagination.

Because when we take a look
at our experience,
yes, there is a sensation of hunger,
but the sensation of hunger
does not arise in the body.
It arises in awareness.

Sensations arise in awareness.
They don’t arise within aa body bag.

Check it out.

We are all familiar with the add on.
We add on a body.
We add on a structure.
We add on the skin surface, a boundary.

But if you pinch yourself right now,
you pinch your arm,
all you experience is a sensation
arising within awareness.

There may be a story
while the sensation is inside my arm
or inside my body.

We are all familiar
with this added on story,
which is based on the belief
that consciousness resides
within a body
or is limited, personal.

But our experience does not lie.
You pinch your arm,
there is a sensation
that arises within awareness.

The images,
the narratives that you carry
about yourself,
these images,
arise in awareness.

You are that
which perceives the image.
You are not the image.

You are the reality which is,
which knows it is,
and which perceives
and knows it perceives.

Check it out.

The body may have a name,
of course, it does.
The body has a certain shape and size,
gender.

And you perceive that.
You perceive the body.
Yes.
For example,
an image in the mirror.
Or a picture, photograph.
Or you can look at your hairy arm.
That’s a man’s arm.

Or the beard growing on your face.
You are the perceiving aspect.

You perceive a mountain
covered with this large cacti set.
They grow in Arizona, I forgot their name.

You are not the mountain.
You’re not defined by the mountain.

You are the reality aspect.
But the mountain
is not separate from that reality.
And yet,
you cannot say
reality is a mountain, period.
No!

You cannot say the ocean is a wave.
No!

You cannot say the rainbow is the yellow color.
No!

It is said that reality is no thing,
and yet everything is it.

How do we reconcile that?
No thing.
There are no things,
and yet everything is it.

The ocean,
we say there are many waves.
But from the perspective of the ocean,
the one and only reality,
what is a wave?

We separate reality in
the world as real,
the body as real,
the mind as real,
the concept as real,
all different realities.

Are there are there four realities?
And then there is I.
I meaning the body, I guess.

From the perspective of ignorance
I refers to the body.

In between you suspend
the mind of time,
the historical mind.

Come to complete not-knowing,
being,
but not in time.
In this moment,
not in time.

There is a Zen koan which says:
what does your face look like
before you were born?

Good question.
The mind can’t go there.
No?
How can I go to before being born?

The mind is material.
It can’t do that.

What if you’re never born?
What is it that is born?
What is your experience of being born?
Tell me something about it.

But don’t tell me a story.
Don’t tell me your grandfather’s story
or your uncle’s story.
Tell me what is it you know!

In the Upanishads there is a reference
to this battle.
The sage says that
you cannot kill that,
which truly is.
Those bodies you imagine to be alive,
they’re not alive.
You cannot kill the life.

That which has the seed of death in it
is already dead.

That which is real,
that which is absolute,
that which is cannot not not be.

You cannot kill reality, truth, essence, life.

The medical industry,
they refer to life
as a heartbeat and brain activity,
MRI activity.

I am not talking about life in that way.
That is not life, that is sentience.

There is a difference
between life and sentience.
The heartbeat can stop
and brain can stop functioning.
That would be the end of
the sentient aspect of this body.

But life is a different matter.
But because there is
such a confusion about the term life,
maybe I should not use the term life.

Let me stay with the term being or reality.

The instrument
is not that which you are.

The body mind is a wonderful bio-computer
with amazing functioning senses
and mental activities
and capacity to
perform complex functions,
but it’s just an instrument.

The best bio-computer around
that we know that we know of.

But why define yourself
via the bio-computer?

You use the bio-computer
in many different ways
for many different functions.

You take care of the bio-computer.
You feed it.
You give it some rest.
You perform various functions
that serve the bio-computer.

This does not mean
that you are the bio-computer.
And if you believe you are
the bio-computer,
then you have the form of mortality
that is haunting you.

You experience a sense of limitation.
You experience that
whatever is happening
to the bio-computer
is happening to you
because you believe yourself
and you feel yourself
to be this bio-computer,
to be this body-mind.

Is it possible to be free from that belief?

We all know it’s an ancient belief
that’s been deeply rooted
in our body-mind.

We feel that we are this person.
We feel that we are this body.
We feel that we are aging now.

The bio computer is aging.
You are not aging.

I know the mind
when the mind hears that,
it goes berserk.
It goes, what the heck?
What the heck are …
what the heck are you talking about?
Of course, I am aging.

But, no, there’s a challenge here.
You are not aging.
You are not getting
every day
closer to death!
The bio-computer is!

This is not a belief.
I’m not asking you to believe this.
I’m inviting you to take a look.
You perceive the bio-computer.
You perceive the body.
You perceive sensations.
You perceive images.

You do not need to identify.
You do.
We do,
but we do not need to identify.

Some people think
that if we don’t identify with the body-mind,
then we won’t be taking care of it.
Nonsense!

You don’t identify with your car,
and you take care of it.
You don’t identify with your shoes,
and you take care of them.
You know? Yeah.
When there is mud on them,
you clean the mud off of them.

Not identifying with the bio-computer
does not imply ignoring it,
does not imply trashing it.
No.
That’s nonsense.

You use your car for a trip. Yeah.
You take care of it.
You change the oil.
You check the air pressure.
When you’re done with the trip,
you park it in the garage.
You forget about it.

Not obsessing about it.
But we obsess about the body-mind.
We obsess about the bio-computer.
A deep identification,
like, that is what my reality is,
it’s my body-mind.
No!

Your body mind is
awareness consciousness.
That which perceives
in this moment,
that which hears these words,
is not a female or a male organism.

That which perceives
these words,
that which hears,
that which perceives is invisible
to the senses.
It is nonphenomenal.
Check it out.

No phenomenal aspect.
It is not a female awareness
or a male awareness
or a tall awareness
or an old awareness
or a young awareness
or an awareness that’s in California
or that’s in Texas.

No.
California and Texas
appear within awareness,
but awareness is not in Texas.
You are not in Texas.

The body-mind is in Texas.
The car is in the garage.

Take a look.

This understanding
is a very significant part
of your human journey.
Much more important
than living fifteen more years
and having a nice house,
with two cars in the garage.

So if you have any questions,
please make sure to unmute yourself.
You can also raise your hand.
Any questions?

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