[anatta]

DISCOVERY - PERCEPTION OF "WHAT IS" (*)


Let us begin as though we know nothing about it at all and start from scratch.

1ST STEP

We see with our eyes, we perceive with our senses the things about us -- the color of the flower, the thousand sounds of different qualities and subtleties, the shadow of the tree and the tree itself. We feel in the same way our own bodies, which are the instruments of these different kinds of superficial, sensory perceptions. If these perceptions remained at the superficial level there would be no confusion at all. That flower, that pansy, that rose, are there, and that's all there is to it. There is no preference, no comparison, no like and dislike, only the thing before us without any psychological involvement. Is all this superficial sensory perception or awareness quite clear?

2ND STEP

Now, the next step; what you think about these things, or what you feel about them, is your psychological response to them. And this we call thought or emotion. The door is there, and when you get emotionally involved in the description you don't see the door. This description might be a word or a scientific treatise or a strong emotional response. Though we are describing something even now, and we have to, the thing we are describing is not our description of it. The word is never the real, and we are easily carried away when we come to the next stage of awareness where it becomes personal and we get emotional through the word. Now when we become aware of this response, we might call it a second depth of awareness.

When there is a visual awareness of the tree without any psychological involvement there is no division in relationship. But when there is a psychological response to the tree, the response is a conditioned response, it is the response of past memory, past experiences, and the response is a division in relationship. This response is the birth of what we shall call the 'me' in relationship and the 'non-me'. The world is seen not as it is, but in its various relationships to the 'me' of memory.

3RD STEP

Now can there be an awareness, an observation of the tree, without any judgment, and can there be an observation of the response, the reactions, without any judgment? In this way, we eradicate the principle of division, the principle of me and non-me, both in looking at the tree and in looking at ourselves. In the seeing of any fact, there is no me. There is either the me or the seeing. There can't be both. The me cannot see, cannot be aware.

4TH STEP

Can the mind, in which is included all our feelings, be free of this conditioning, which is the past? There is no me in the present. As long as the mind is operating in the past, there is the me, and the mind is this past, the mind is this me. All this is one unitary action of awareness because in this there are no conclusions.

Can the mind be free of the past? Who is putting this question? If it is the observer who is putting the question, then he is trying to escape from the fact of himself. Either one turns away from a fact or one faces it. In fact, just to ask this question at all is already an act of escape. Let us be aware whether this question is or is not an act of escape.

5TH STEP

Now, being aware of that, it doesn't ask the question! It does not ask the question at all because it sees the trap. Awareness has shown us the nature of the trap, and therefore there is the negation of all traps; so the mind is now empty. It is empty of the me and of the trap. This mind has a different dimension of awareness. This awareness is not aware that it is aware.

All that you have to do is to be aware from the beginning to the end, not become inattentive in the middle of it. This new quality of awareness is attention, and in this attention, there is no frontier made by the me.

This attention is the highest form of virtue, therefore it is love.


(The Pilgrim and his Holy Pilgrimage)



(*) What is: Cái-đang-là; cái gì đang xảy ra trong hiện tại; thực tại; chân lý...

***