"This very mind is the Buddha." —Mazu
Don't make enlightenment or awakening out to be some future event, achieved by some person. Awakened awareness is here and now, right under our noses. Making it out to be some incomprehensible pie-in-the-sky means chasing it forever.
What does this mean? Awareness is always already awakened. It's there 24/7, undisturbable, radiant, and serene. Where is awareness? It's everything you see, hear, feel, and think, right now. It's the field in which all of your experiences arise. The thinking mind and feeling body you experience happen in this field of awareness, along with everything in the "external" world right now (e.g. the place you see). You are not just this mind and body, but the entire awareness in which they are experienced. If you think you are just your mind and body, you are identifying with a fragment rather than the whole. I'm not speaking figuratively: The entirety of awareness you experience right now is you. You don't exist in the world, the world appears in You, in awareness.
When you go into deep sleep, your world goes dark. But the world doesn't disappear for everyone else. If you take a psychedelic drug, the contents of your awareness are altered, but not for others. The entire world that you experience, moment by moment, is in your awareness. You're it, and it's you.
Awareness is like the canvas on which the experiences of your life (seeing, hearing, feeling, thinking, your very thoughs and body) are painted. Awareness is like the screen and your experiences are like a movie showing on it. Whether the movie is horror, comedy, tragedy, or romance, the screen is never bothered by the it. Movies come and go, the screen always remains. Events of your life come and go, happiness, tragedies, sadness, love, and joy. The knowing screen of awareness in which you experience these things has always been the same for your entire life.
The screen is intimately close with experience and yet utterly serene. It never judges the movie, and so is unconditionally accepting and loving. Searching for loving, serene peace is like being a movie character who is searching for the screen. The character will forever search and never find it. YOU ARE THE SCREEN.
So what is there to do? If awakened awareness is already here, then how come I still feel like crap sometimes (or much of the time)?
I know it seems paradoxical, but it's simpler than you realize. Nondual mediation methods are all pointers that direct us to look right at awareness itself. They remind us, in the middle of the movie, that the screen has been there all along. The movie & screen analogy is a common one, used by Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta because they're intuitive pointers.
Look out at the world you see right now. Widen your attention to the entire field of awareness. The window of your visual awareness is something like an oval screen:
It's just like when you're watching a movie and you get so engrossed in it, you forget that it's a movie. But once in a while, you have an "oh yeah" moment and remember it's a movie and that you're looking at a screen. Do the same thing with your visual field, although you can also do it with other senses too. Look out a the "world" you see, i.e. the picture of the world that your perceiving mind is displaying on the screen awareness. Whether you're sitting quietly in meditation and/or doing this throughout the day, deliberately remind yourself to distinguish between the movie of experience being played and the screen of awareness on which it's playing. Set up reminders (timers, post it notes) if that helps you.
The movie is vivid and changes, but the screen itself is silent stillness and is never altered. The movie has all kinds of drama, but the screen is serene and peaceful. The characters in the movie struggle and suffer, but the screen itself is impartial. However, remember that this is a metaphor. The screen of awareness is a special type of screen that intimately knows what is appearing in it, while a regular movie screen doesn't. The screen of awareness is impartial, but is also deeply accepting and unconditionally loving.
The more often you remember that you are the screen of awareness rather than the movie itself, the more easily you will be able to access that loving peace. Even if you think you can't do it, or forget how, or your stress level is too high, that itself is happening in awareness. Even the worst anxiety and depression happen in this serene field of being, we just don't know to look for it. But the more you make this shift, the more it will deepen and broaden in your everyday life. Eventually, it will always be apparent that it's there.
Now Dd you see why thinking of awakening or nirvana as a future thing happening to some person is a mistake? It's a misleading thought, and it points in the wrong direction. Look directly at awareness itself and recognize all of its beautiful qualities. You are that!
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“Vast as the universe is, it fits inside the mind.”
—Hanshan
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