It is said to understand the nature of the mind is to be enlightened. It is said to understand the nature of the mind is to be free from suffering and attachment. I want to understand the nature of the mind. 

There is nothing the mind cannot make "real". Everything can be "real" in the mind: thoughts, emotional imagination, correct or incorrect views. The mind animates everything. Everything "real" in the mind is limited in time. Everything "real" in the mind passes. One who has a body is disillusioned by the mind. Is everything the mind animates exactly "real"? One who has a body certainly has images coming from the mind. But everything that emerges in the mind has no necessity. It can be that or the other. It is equal. Mind is infinite, as it can animate anything. The images that come from the mind have no rules. They are similar to dreams when one sleeps. And we are attached to these images, to these dreams. Attachment has great consequences.  

To understand the nature of the mind is to look at consequences. The mind creates images. These images become demands. When images become demands, there is attachment. When there is attachment, there will be suffering. Images have no necessity. When one demands an image to be life or to be experience, one demands a dream to manifest, to exist. And one reduces life. Life is always more than a demand. One demands what should be. We somehow overlook our forceful nature. We do not seem to understand that our obsession and desire to exist led us astray. We deny life. We insist on existing, so we make images our demands for what is. There is now a duality between images and experience, images and life, conflict and harmony. And we live with this duality throughout our life. 
Our life is lived through duality. We are trapped in cause and effect. We desire and we hope. Duality is everywhere. The images from our mind are not just images they are our demands. 

When we demand existence, we demand to be. To be is to be permanent. To be is to be unmoving. To be is to be dead. We can only ever be one thing, which is dead. That is exactly to say that, while we are alive, everything is false. "All characteristics are false". "All phenomena are from the mind". The words, are just words. They are false too. The words are "rafts to reach the other shore", "to reach the opposite shore of the sea of existence". The nature of the mind is great. Its capacity is infinite. This is "the voidness of non-void". And attachment to existence is incorrect. 

The source of the mind's animation is obscure. It has no logic, it has no predictability. Hence we say it has no necessity. It can be that or the other; it's equal. The agitation of the mind is an experience of alterity for one who has a body. The source of the mind's animation is unknown, and the mind is vast and infinite. To one who has a body, this source is the first alterity, as it is foreign, unpredictable, uncontrollable. This mysterious source gives birth to a frontier, to a fragmentation, to a duality. 

As I examine and find this idea of duality. I am forced to question: what is looking? Is it still the mind and its images that are looking at itself, or is it something else that is looking? This idea of duality calls for a question: Is there something else other than the mind that can register what I examine? I feel there is a noticing energy that can register the mind's animation. The question here is: Is there something that can register the mind's nature in one who has a body? Or is consciousness the mind? 

To investigate the nature of the mind is exploring what is looking. 

If it is the mind that is looking at its own images by a dedoubling trick that has gone almost unnoticed, then when we look we never really leave the mind. The mind is commenting on the mind. And hence the mind is infinite. The mind is consciousness. Everything is mind. Any phenomenon is mind. And we said the image coming from the mind has no necessity, so the mind itself has no necessity. It is vast, and it is infinite. 

If there is something else that is looking at the mind, this noticing energy, which I do not try to define yet. Then there is the mind and something that can look at the images of the mind. This energy registers all the animations of the mind and it is not the mind.  If this energy is real, then I notice that I cannot go further in doubling the question "what is looking at the energy itself?". I've reached the bottom. Because if I ask "what is looking to recognize this energy? Is there another entity looking at the energy itself?" And without answering, we see that by this recursive thinking, we can ask the same question for ever. The question "What is looking?" becomes essentially endless. It will be echoed endlessly. We can endlessly add another level of "what is looking" which is false. Do not believe. Think with your body. You might want me to demonstrate every point as an equation which is a default of our culture. 

This is not perfect mathematical reasoning, and I don't intend it to be. But these two considerations don't appear mutually exclusive. They're not mutually exclusive because the question "Is this energy an image of the mind as well?" is relevant. This noticing energy is an image of the mind. But it is also a reality. And therefore there is no duality between this energy and this image. This seeing energy is a reality, because one who has a body has already experienced the interval between two thoughts, the interval between two images. In this quiet interval, without image, without animation, without thoughts, there is no chaos, there is no demand. There is an energy that's still registered this interval, this moment, this instant. 

So the nature of the mind is to create images that have no necessity. Images or thoughts are expressed with words.This is mentation.  Words are false as they are images. Images are false as they are from the mind. Characteristic are false because they are from the mind. The mind "possesses things and is without things. It is a single thing, and it extends over ten thousand things". "This is the Mysterious Understanding." With this clarity attachment is not. And there is a noticing energy that can see it all. We cannot deny this noticing energy because we continue to see in between two images from the mind. 

So our life is indeed suffering.  We have images and we are so attached to them. But one can see and be liberated. Our life is a tsunami in a glass. And it can be seen for what it is. We live in duality, because we demand existence and non-existence. We demand frontier. What if there was a Way beyond any duality? Beyond "To be or not to be?" This is understanding or seeing self-nature for some. And to be liberated is to never stop seeing the nature of the mind. To be liberated is to see there is no liberation. When we endlessly see the nature of our mind, we meditate every instant and we understand the tempting simplicity of existence and non-existence. We have no self because there is nothing that is not ourselves. And "serenity is the final word of all teachings". 

The mind gives images. 

Images are turned in demands.

Hence duality is. 

As one who has a body cannot fathom non-existence 

Attachement emerges. 

Conflict is suffering. 

Seeing the nature of the mind is to transcend duality. 

Devoid of duality there is emptiness. 

Emptiness is liberation. 

Emptiness is still an image. 

Understanding happens mid-sentence. 

Words are false. 

Buddha said "there is no enlightenment"

They ask for an absolute? Give them the mundane. 

They ask for the mundane? Give them an absolute. 

This is or is not a rhythm 

Perception is not enough to transform. To verbally understand is not enough to turn one's life around. Transformation needs alertness. 

There is this insane inertia in one's life. One starts a million times. One begins again and again. Although one starts over, one does not transform. Our life is the same. This inertia is a glue that one experiences every day. This inattention is an ocean where one lives. Will does not need discipline, it needs necessity and alertness.

Consider your day. How much of your day is lived in a state of great alertness? One may be alert when one reads or when one begins for the million-and-one time, but then the next moment inattention takes over. We live in our mind. 

Thoughts, the ocean, the glue are there again. Alertness and readiness for life at every instant is not how one lives one's life. One vaguely pays attention to how to be a success. Although even there, seriousness is lacking. One wishes, one hopes, one chatters. But attention is vague even for what one desires. Could it be this total attention at every waking second is what we need to understand and turn our life around?

Attention when one begins. Attention when one walks. Attention when one dusts off his desk. Attention when one enters a room. Attention when thoughts arise. Attention when impatience, desperation or hope arise.
Attention, therefore love for one's life. 

Our whole life is aimed at self-accomplishment. What is the nature of this obsession? 

We live with the idea, the hypothesis that there is a true nature for myself and life's meaning is to find it. To find it, we work jobs, search for vocation, attempt to better ourselves, and our life is an endless search of effort in order to realize the self. 

We are miserable when we don't succeed as if a life full of success and accomplishment is only waiting to be discovered... If only we worked hard enough. In our minds, there is no self-accomplishment without effort. Effort is the force that will sculpt the statue in the perfect shape that is an accomplished self. 

Everything in our life becomes a protection of the self, an effort to aggrandize the self, protect it, embellish it. And all of it is ideas on ideas, and we live in this world of ideas. We do not know reality. We do not know truth. The self is the center of recognition. The self is a tower within. And this tower isolates.

Everything is experienced from this tower within. This is isolation. This tower is built on experience, memory, ideas, opinions. The more we live, the higher the tower, and more isolated we become. Life is lived from the heights of the tower. What does not concern the tower is ignored. The tower must be solid, that means the self must be certain. Everything is made for solidity of the tower. Every brick on this tower is added for certainty. And in the process, life becomes dull and empty, because only what concerns the tower matters. Yet, life is immensely vast and greater than the small foundation of the tower. 

One can see his own tower within. And as one sees it, one sees emergence the possibility of a life without it. One can contemplate from within what life is without this tower. One sees life itself. 
How subtle life is, how vast, how beautiful, and how free life is when we are on foot within life itself, and not from the top of the tower. When one climbs down from his tower, one surrenders. And one feels the burden dissipating in the immensity of life and the journey that unfolds at every moment. This tower is seen from every angle at every moment. This tower is conformity. This tower is self-preservation. This tower is self-continuance. This tower is self-prevarication. There is nothing but a tower, a certain tower. And everything you ever cared about is about this tower. 

Fear comes when the tower shakes. Ambition is building a higher tower. Thoughts are whispers of the tower in the wind. The mind is a force that can serve the tower, but not only.
The tower needs profits, security, and advancement. Otherwise, the tower doubt if it does not grow. When you desire, the tower plans its next level. When you are in pain, the tower doesn't get its next level. And when you have pleasure, the tower earns. Whether in pain or pleasure, the root of the tower grows deeper. For the tower is a center. The center of our lives. 

You can have the highest tower within, but do you have anything if you don't have peace? 

Every day this question is asked within. As one starts to be awake and understands the lies and sees the truth of his life.

This question still remains: "What must I do with this life? What can I do with this time? What am I meant to be or do to not waste this life? What employ should I take? What should I do next, this very moment? What can I do to avoid wasting this life? I feel I have something pure and unique, and my life is just an eternal routine that is senseless, tasteless, and wasted. I have questioned my heart about what to do, and it doesn't seem to answer. I am petrified, idle, dull. I see an ocean of things I do not want to do and not a single raft of a thing that I can devote myself to. Everything is forced. Time is clicking. I have started many times to very quickly stop by a lack of sincerity that I knew was missing from the beginning. But as time advanced, I thought I must do something, I must try. And so I occupied myself with work and activities. But I know that life cannot be spent doing random things completely asleep."

There is fear, there is this place within from which one looks that is full of all these questions. Full of fear. One fears to be nothing. One desires to matter as much as the sun matters to the earth. One is not the sun. One has belief one can be a sun. Has one looked at such belief?  What sun can a man be? No man has ever been a sun for Earth. Yet all desire to be as immense and bright as the only sun we have. 

Acceptance of what is. 

Ideas then Action. It is your world. This is your room. We think then act. Within this room, you ask life to make you a sun. This is from this room that you look at everything.  And so your life is the same as this room. You have doubt about what to do, yet you dream to be a sun. We create this conundrum for ourselves and live forever within it. Nothing that man knows lasts except the Sun. So he demands to be a sun, so that one is able to know permanence. We are so fearful.  

From this room, one looks and expects a resolution. A final state that gives lasting bliss. But one doesn't exactly know what he asks for - peace, lasting bliss. One is not really serious about that. One doesn't really demand peace. One demands profit, advancement, and fame. This room is not the antechamber of the immensity of life. It is the corridor of the ultimate fear to be nothing. 

What are your beliefs about bliss? What stands between you and instant bliss? Beliefs. Your mind. "I'll be bored. Bliss is absence of action". Here are beliefs that one rarely examine. One plans for the future because one wants to be something.
One is with the mind, which is this room of endless questions. 

A man that is drowning does not ask how to swim. Are you yet drowning?

You need passion.  You need this force that is  expressed positively, that exists in affirmation as opposed to the simple privation of conflict or fear or anxiety. We survive without passion. But the question is how do we want to fill during this journey of consciousness? As you wake up, could there be a force that pulls you out of bed effortlessly? Could it be a thing for which your only influence is simply to get out of its way, to keep your mind out of it? Without it, life is lacking one of its qualities which is natureness. Isn't passion a trait of nature? 

So what do we mean by passion? Passion is pure energy. Passion is pure sincerity. Passion is effortless. Passion is a lasting source of energy, action, ideas. Passion is necessity. Passion is a source of action that does not require volition. It is natural. It is doubtless. It is nature. 

It is something that is really hard to come by because all humans obsess over achievement, gains and accolades. All men want the world.  So the environment is against passion. The culture is against passion. A mind that demands more, cannot let passion be.
So when one demands passion to enter one's life, one doesn't know exactly what is the nature of the demand. One doesn't see the world one lives in. One doesn't know passion. One doesn't recognize that beliefs we hold sacred are the exact opposite of passion. One doesn't see that one's most precious wish for his life is precisely the antithesis of passion—the wish to be a success, the wish to be something, the wish to be someone. These beliefs are sacred to humans. These beliefs are a projection on the world's opinion. It is not a belief that starts and ends within a human being. It is a belief that needs the world and precisely the world's recognition. And these belief make no sense without the world. When in fact passion begins and ends with a human being. You cannot have the world and have passion.

To most of us everything is work. Everything requires effort. Passion is a never-ending flame and it requires certain conditions to burn. The world is a corrupting force. The world burdens 100 times more than it frees. One does not want passion, one wants to be respectable. One does not want passion, one wants the security and continuity of the world.
We don't see the ways of the world. Our ways and our sacred beliefs stand squarely in the way of passion. The world is a ocean of carbon copies. Passion is nature. Nature does not make copies. Only a place of deep understanding can allow passion to truly emerge. The world or passion? The self or passion? Beliefs or passion?. When one demands passion, it is nature that is called upon. How can nature enter our lives when everything we care about is to be part of the world?
With the same dreams, the same beliefs, with the same lives, with the same fears, with the same culture, with the same anxiety, we are all copies.

When we casually demand passion to enter our life, we do not know what we ask for. Passion in the culture is not passion. How many athletes, artists, or creators live with something they once called their passion and live in a prison? They play the same way as others. They practice the same. They write the same books. They play the same music.
So passion is not a vocational job. Passion is an understanding for what the world is and what the world's influence is on a human being. Passion is when other things are not. The demands for an outcome. The requirement to be approved. The fear of being liked. These influences are worldly. Passion is not worldly. It is not transactional. It is highly personal. Where in nature is there a transaction? There is symbiosis. So passion needs first an understanding of what passion is not. Passion needs symbiosis with what is. It needs to understand how we live because it is our most direct reality. And the more one contemplates, the more one feels the courage to stand alone. 

It is truly wild to consider how frequently we notice the inept ways of the world, and how attached we remain to the world. Until one sees the emergence of necessity within himself to examine his ways, one does not know the life he has. One can live without passion and die a copy. And one can explore the path of his unique and natural energy for the only sake of finding out. No one will be remembered. But how does one want to feel during this time? Sacred beliefs need to be understood as to elicit what keeps us terrorized to be alone on our path. Nothing can be forced. The urge to solve and get to a result is one of the many things that doesn't let you look and possibly understand. The very context from which you demand to fix the lack of passion in your life is a product of sacred belief you are yet to understand.
We truly are nature's creation. The problems we have are not natural.  Maybe if we learn to see how we stand in our own way, we might live a life nature intended for us to have. And by way of subtraction, by way of understanding, one finds his way back. And maybe passion can be a reality on the edge of life.

Billions and billions of years of human lives have been dedicated to it. Every man seeks fulfillment. Fulfillment is maybe the reason man has not yet committed suicide. Fulfillment is perhaps the reason man does not know peace. He hopes for fulfillment. He desires it. Everything he does is to be fulfilled. 
What is it exactly? Does it exist? What is the thing that is fulfilled? For most of us, fulfillment is a point on the horizon. One day, we will get it. It is hope for a resolution of human misery. But in our mind this resolution, this hope are vague and never examined. Fulfillment is an idea that man has. "One day I will be fulfilled and it will be all worth it." Fulfillment is an idea that can justify or explain anything. But what reality the idea of fulfillment really has? 

There is the idea of a higher self that needs to be realized. And fulfillment will be the reward for such realisation. Fulfillment is an arrival. It is a point in time when my problems will be forever resolved. It is in our mind heaven on Earth. The ultimate arrival. One is forced to notice that these are all ideas, which we have never experienced.
Fulfillment is an ideal, a myth, a point on the horizon that remains vague, undefined, and supposedly dependent on the person. Fulfillment is supposedly reached by different means: vocation, ideal, virtue, love. Fulfillment is a reward where the constant misery of man has ceased. It is life's purpose to reach such human nirvana. In the absence of such heaven of earth, man settles for seeking pleasure of all kinds. 

And when man seeks fulfillment, they do not know what they seek. We do not question whether fulfillment is possible or real. Yet our whole life is aimed to achieve it.
Why does a man need fulfillment? He wants to become something. He wants continuity. He needs to continuously make sense of life. So he invents the ideal of fulfillment that makes sense of life. He invents a point far, far away in time that will give him what he desires. A point in the future that justifies his current state of sorrow and hard work. He does not know what else to do but hard work. And because to waste a life is a terrible thing, man has an ideal. Fulfillment is an ideal.

An ideal that proclaims a future resolution will be our reward also silently states that living is not enough. It says that man as he is, is not complete. The basis of fulfillment is that something is missing to man. What is exactly missing? And man must fill this gap so that he may be resolved, so that he may be fulfilled. And so he has a good reason for strife, hard work, and effort which give man something to do. An ideal is always in relationship with the future. An ideal is always a point on the horizon. By nature, as we look and wait for the horizon, how could not discount what is life here and now. An ideal demands a postponement. Ideal trades now for tomorrow.

Is there a higher self to be fulfilled? What possibly is standing between this higher self and its immediate fulfillment? Can we answer precisely to the question what is missing to be fulfilled? Are these ideas not extremely vague and undefined? Like a thick mist coming from our mind? Are they not the consequence of fear and confusion? Do we need maybe an escape from what is? Can escapes free men? So fulfillment is an idea that intends to solve the problem of man's gaping hole within him. Instead of examining this existential hole within, he looks at fiction, he looks at ideas, he wonders how can he be fulfilled. 

Without the escapes to avoid examining this existential hole we feel within us, would we come up with the idea of fulfillment? What is this hole? We feel it, we look at it. Especially when we are unhappy, depressed, or frustrated, this is when we are in pain to not be fulfilled.  If this gap within us could speak, it would probably say: "There is more to life than this. This cannot be life." And so this gap is a center of recognition.  Which is another form of the self that demands more from life. In demanding more it says: "It's not enough!". Do we know what life is to be so convinced it is not enough? 

One examines this demand: "If it is not enough, what is missing?" And the gap may respond: "I don't know! It simply is not enough!" And for decades we live with this belief that it is not enough. Like a child with totally unreasonable demands because he lacks hours of sleep. 
 
Could it be that we don't know life, so we ask for more? Could it be that this life of ours that constantly demands for more has made our heart empty and our mind dull? Could it be that our life of automatons made us blind? Can there be a demand for fulfillment without the self? 

Something I've never thought was possible: you can act without motive, without plan, without goals, without a desire to acquire, to gain, to satisfy the self, to accomplish what we think is the meaning of life (our self-aggrandizement). Everything we do is to acquire, to gain, to profit the self. 

For just a moment, drop all your motives, desires, and goals. Just drop your beliefs. Play with this idea as an experiment. What is left? Nothing. We have nothing left because everything we do is to gain. We live in fear and anxiety and misery and this strife and fear make us so empty and dull. Strife and fear makes us oblivious to such a large dimension of life because we have blinders. Nothing matters but profit the self. It is obvious to see how miserable a life of constant strife and fear is. It is a life of a slave.

Why is it that after decades of personal acquisitiveness we continue on this path? Man does not desire peace, man does not look, and man does not even imagine another path is possible. What is this path? 

Most of us recognize the idiocy, the shallowness, and the wastefulness of a life spent chasing acquisition—ideas, properties, wealth, accolades, status. We know from decades of experience that the smallest success does not solve anything that we hoped. And instead of reconsidering our ways, we endlessly demand to achieve more of the same vacuity. More is the self.
Most of us never leave such a path despite seeing the vacuity of our life. We do not leave such acquisitive chase that is completely uncreative because when we consider how we live, we think "If I don't thrive, or put in the hard work, what am I meant to do with my life? How should I occupy the decades I am left to live? What reason is there to do anything if personal profit and betterment are not the end goal and the center of my life?". 

Although we have had many moments of realisation that this life of acquisition is vain, we remain stuck for decades, because we can't begin to see the alternative path. If this alternative path was better understood, men will not remain stuck with a life they don't know how to transform. 

I wasted years in these dead-ends, and I could not see that men could act without motive with an intensity of action, sincerity, and purity that goals, motives, and desire could not match. I thought "If one has peace, then he has no reason to do anything because he has peace". I didn't see that with freedom, men have pure energy. He acts and never imitates because he doesn't seek others' man accolades or achievements. He walks his own path. This path is refined at every instant. This path is an exploration. It is constantly unfolding. Actions are not a projection of motives to gain or ideas but a constant experimentation. This man can now learn because he love his path. He does not work. He plays. The consideration of goals, setting plans for future achievement is no longer central to his approach. He walks his path from a place of understanding. He understand the nature of goals and motives. He understands the fear that organized his life. He understands that no matter his actions, his skills or achievement, he will remain nothing. This is what is, regardless of his former hopes and dreams. He does what he does from his heart. He understand how ideas, goals, plans, and motives are a source of infinite waste of energy. He sees the ways of the world for what they are. So they no longer influence him. He is free so each instant is an acute presence. And on his new path, his old fears and ideas visit him. But he knows what they are. He sees what he could not see before. For the total misery he felt before could never be preferable to not accepting what is. And so this path is personal.  Effortless because sincere. Pure because selfless. Free because mindless. This is a path of pure energy. 

There is a vast path without horizon when a man acts effortlessly with a free heart.  Energy is abundant, for his heart is no longer occupied with shallow and empty goals. He understand what is. And this man can be utterly unknown to the world yet he probably is the best in the world because he is on a path of never ending exploration of his own heart. It doesn't matter where he places in the world, for each moment is a sincere exploration of truth of whatever is doing. For freedom is at the beginning, not at the end. For energy is endless for a heart that is free. For peace is not a reward but a side effect of understanding. Your heart is in prison, see the prison. 

Now after decades of such a life, it's obvious that this life brings only efforts, toil, misery, fear, and anxiety, and some occasional moments of joy. Yet, we all do it despite the insanity and misery of such ambition.  We continue on this path.  Because we don't see what this path really is. And perhaps because, we do not see that action without ambition is possible. 

Ambition is always comparative. We seek to achieve more than others have achieved. Our ambition is a point on the horizon defined by what others have done. Ambition is competitiveness. Ambition is to dominate others by way of achievements, skills, or money. So ambition always exists in relation to others. And it is a cause for great sorrow. Ambition is comparison. Ambition is domination. Ambition is imitation. In the process of ambition, we become second-hand individuals. For ambition, we have become copies with nothing we can claim our own. 

In the process, we have renounced our own path. Our own understanding. Our own discovery. Our life is known in advance. For what? Why do we all live such a life? 

To look. To be uncertain.  

We don't look at our lives. We are desperate to be certain. To be certain, we copy the ways of the world. To be certain we desire what others desire. We fear to be uncertain. We fear to stand alone on our path. We give away our humanity to be certain. We choose conformity over uncertainty, imitation over truth. 

Unless we have a complete understanding of the ways of the self and the mind, we fail to see that a completely different path is available. Self-accomplishment is the holy grail in our culture. Maybe it is the shackles of mankind? As long as we live to accomplish the self, we live in fear, effort and pain. Fear, effort, pain have dulled our mind and heart. And our lives are so empty. 

But along the way of ambition, some of us are forced to reconsider our life. Some of us, do see that achievements bear so little compared to the pain and misery of the journey. The end is never worth the means. We pay a too heavy price. Anyone that has worked and achieved knows that for a 5-minute joy, we pay in years of efforts. Isn't something wrong with this picture? So why does not man reroute his life?

Man does not see the life he has. Man does not see another route is possible. He asks "Without ambition, what am I to do?". Man is not interested in facts. He desires to jump to action so that he can enjoy the reward. And we do not get anywhere. Because without reward, without profit, without benefit, there is no reason to do anything. Everything is a transaction. We do nothing unless it leads to profit. When in fact profit is never really profit. Our currencies have never really amounted to anything. And our lives are empty. The currencies we seek have never filled the hole we have within ourselves. And so maybe if a man could be exposed to the vision that action is possible without ambition, without effort, he would not have to continue to pay such a price with his life.

Action without ambition 

This alternative path comes when we understand the whole nature and structure of ambition and ideas. Energy of action is possible without desire. Action without idea is real, direct and pure. Our whole life is lived in the opposite way. We have an idea and then we act. And so action is always short of the idea. And it leads to endless discontentment. All our problems are with ideas. Not with actions. Ideas make us immobile. For one action that an idea has brought to life, we have millions of actions we did not take because of ideas. Ideas don't know necessity. The mind do not know necessity. 
Because ideas are ideas. They are from the mind. Actions are never the exact realization of an idea. There is always a gap. This gap is the source of an immense dissatisfaction in our lives. Many will never reconsider their ambition because the alternative route is a route that ignores the world's currencies - money, fame, status. It is a path where love, interest and energy are unbridled by our mind. Because the nature and structure of the world's currencies are understood for what they are. A passion without a motive and a complete understanding of the mind gives man a different vision. And in this new understanding, perception is action. Man does not need to be convinced, he simply sees where he stands. He acts out of this new vision that he has formed. He acts from this new understanding that becomes a place within him from which he does everything in his life. This understand is unfolding at every instant. The more he explores his own vision, the more energy and passion without motive he find in his life. 

Yet for decades we haven’t really looked. Truly looking is extraordinarily difficult. 

We think we look at our routine, at our conflicts, at our relationships, at our habits. But all we do is have gesticulating thoughts about escapes and illusions. We don’t look at what is. Instead we hope, we attempt to fix, we intellectualise. We hope to be something and we are miserable because whatever we do, we are not. No matter the accolade, the wealth or the fame. 

As soon as we vaguely think about any part of our life, we are assaulted with thoughts about “what should rather be” or “ how will I do better next time”. We make a vague commitment that sounds like “never again will I do this or that”. 

And? It never works. We never change. 

We are not talking about changing jobs, or partners. We are talking about transformation. A change that never goes back.
When do we ever transform? Look around, how many people have we seen transformed in their lifetime? Despite extraordinary technical progress after thousands of years of civilization, what progress man has shown when it comes to peace, equanimity, and a full life?


We don't look where everything seems to begin, our mind.

And when despair is at its peak, we then think we are looking. But all we do is analyze. 

To analyse is not looking

Because to analyze is just a projection of our mind and its conditioning. When we analyse, we find in accordance with our pre-fabricated conclusions, hopes and ambitions. When we analyse, we stir the same thoughts over and over again. When we analyse, we don’t consider what is looking. When we analyse, we never look at this conditioning.
We seek the root cause of our existential sorrow. We debate about it endlessly and what has it really done for us? After decades, in disbelief, we ask “why nothing seems to work” and then maybe we will listen to ourselves. Indeed, nothing has worked.

In comparison to the effort we put into analysing, it is wild to observe how little we care about the tool that is looking: our mind. We don't understand it. We don’t look at it while it is looking. Our mind is responsible for this armada of thoughts that has defined our lives, and yet we never look at it, never question it.

We can live 60 years without truly looking. We can’t truly look until we understand what is looking.

What is the tool that is looking?

We have truly looked before. Even accidentally, we have had such an experience in our life. As a child, we came in direct contact with fear, without any volition of our own. When in a state of passive alertness that simply arose, we understood that this moment was fear. We didn’t debate about its cause. We didn’t rationalise it.  We didn’t explain this moment. We didn’t think about being courageous - this is what the mind does when it analyses. We were in direct contact with this moment. We did not seek to be in contact with this moment. It happened. Almost like an accident. A child innocently comes in direct contact with fear. And when it happens, the fear disappears. The force that squeezed the child's heart suddenly is lifted. Fear has dissolved. The problem of fear has dissolved. 

In this moment, the mind is quiet. It was not made quiet. It is quiet. There was no volition of the child that made the mind quiet. It was quiet. There was no volition of the child to look in order to be free of fear. The child looked with intensity at “what is”, innocently. Almost by accident. Without volition. Without appetite for freedom. This passive alertness was not aimed at anything. It came in direct contact with fear. And instantly, the child was free of fear. The child could almost feel within the dissolution of fear. 

This is looking. This is coming in direct contact with “what is”.  In a flash of understanding, the child understood and fear dissolved. We have accidentally experienced this before. 

And as we consider now such effortless resolution of fear, our mind demands: “how should I get this?” “what method should I use to achieve this?”. 

By jumping to achieving results, this is our mind looking again. This is our conditioning. This is the litany of thoughts we have all the time. How to achieve? How to gain? How to be a success? How to have peace? 

There is a very high wall of thoughts that stands between us and the thing being observed. And so, we do not look. We only add a brick to this wall of thoughts, thought after thought. 

As we notice our mind having opinions about what is being observed, we are observing our mind that is looking. We are catching this wall of thoughts. We are observing our inattention. And doing so, there is attention. Inattention is responsible for the chaos. As one attempts to observe existential issues in one's life, what one finds first is our mind and its conditioning. Not the truth about what is being observed. One finds first the mind and its minions: thoughts.  

To look without thought

And it seems extraordinarily difficult to look without our thoughts., To simply look at what is, without debating, without hoping, without fixing. As soon as we look at anything, we are desperate to fix what we are looking at.

Imagine looking at your child, and as long as you look at your child the only thought that consumes you is “How can I fix my child?”. Will you know your child? Does your child need to be fixed? Will you understand your child? 

When we examine our own life, we look as we look at this child. With the same screen of ideas that consumes us. The idea that we need to fix, achieve and improve. And so, as we don’t see this child, we don’t see what is. Our hopes, expectations and ambitions are all there is. This wall of thought is all we are in contact with. And when one catches it, when one comes in direct contact with one’s mind and its conditioning, its intentions, its agenda, something within changes. Something is understood. Something is seen directly. And there is freedom. There is an understanding of the tool that is looking. The mind is seen gesticulating with its hopes, its fears, its urge to achieve and fix. 

A quiet mind is a rare occurrence in our lives. We may have forgotten what a quiet mind is. But we have known this before. What is the interval between two thoughts? This is quietness. 

And so as we are looking at the series of opinions in our mind on “what should be”, we come in contact with “what is” - the wall of our conditioning. This is our most immediate reality. We look at the wall of our conditioned mind attempting to observe the first issue we wanted to look at. And as you experiment with this, you will probably be waiting for this conditioning burden to be lifted off your shoulder so that you can fix the issue you are first interested in. It won’t work. This expectation to fix is the conditioning. You demand a result as you attempt to look, and so you are not looking.

Words do not open doors 

We have had this experience before, when you look at the sky and you are in direct contact with what you are looking at. This immediate contact is lost the moment thought arises: “this is beautiful”, “this is the milky way”. That short instant you were in direct contact with the sky. In that short moment, there was quietness. There was no mind. In that short moment, there was no distinction between the observer and the observed. 

Experiment with this, with feelings. Do not name the feeling as it emerges within you, you will remain with the feeling a moment longer. Just a moment longer. And these moments are pure and quiet.
Death is the end of consciousness. Death is the end of the ability for this alertness. So it is understandable why so many of us feel so empty and dead inside. This alertness is so rarely experienced. All we have is our thoughts. So we are walking but dead, incapable of looking, incapable of finding reality. 

Some of us are haunted by the fact that we are empty. And the confusion grows within us. And this passion and sincerity are haunting us. As one understands the words verbally, confusion grows within. Because still nothing has changed. How many books and philosophers has one read? One has nothing to show for it.
Because words do not open doors. Words do not look. If they did, we would have many Buddha or Jesus around the world. 

Our inattention is responsible for our empty lives. This is of no help to anyone until the conditioning of our mind is truly understood. We read everything from a place of conditioning that demands  “I must achieve”, “I must have a great life”, “I must get the outcome that is spoken”. Maybe this sincerity and passion to look can only be refined as one run down millions of dead-ends. Or maybe one does not need to waste decades running down dead–ends. 

We are desperate and we don't actually understand. Desperation for an outcome, for a method, for a reward is again our mind. We are looking via the mind. We are so used to it. There is nothing to do to look, but to perceive the gesticulation of the mind looking. Attention is elicited by actually perceiving the inattention of the mind. This is how it can start. By catching inattention, attention takes over. And the mind is pushed in a corner and from that corner it can operate and function very efficiently when required. 

"This is misery. This is home." 

We are so comfortable with our problems. There is such incredible inertia. We lie down with our problems and claim at the same time: “this is misery, this is home”. 
And for some of us, something vibrates within us when we read these words.  We understand the truth verbally but not with our bones. And for us, it can get worse before it gets better. Because to be close, and yet, not there at all, is infuriating… And here again we catch our mind. It demands progress, outcome and achievement. It is our conditioning. This is our misery. This is our home. We have not left it yet. 

Tell me, when a child starts painting does he need a result?

Picture a builder. It is your mind that attempts to build a new pyramid exactly on the ground where an old pyramid already stands. This old pyramid is there to see for those who look. But to the builder, to your mind, it can't see the old pyramid. The builder is furious he is not getting anywhere with his pyramid. Not knowing why. Your mind is a pyramid of thoughts, and this pyramid is your life. You are desperate for a new one, but maybe life is no pyramid at all, but a blank slate experiencing everything anew.

Your blood moves in your veins 

Air moves through your lungs 

Food moves through your digestive tube 

Planets moves in orbit around stars. 

Times clicks aways eternally 

Life is eternal impermanence

Idleness is nowhere to be found. 

Yet one cause of our deepest sorrow as human is our desire for things to be permanent. 

We hope for eternal love

We hope for eternal bliss

Some wait for heavens of eternal peace

How ironic that human are terrified of death. 

Death is the end of all movement. 

Death is permanence. 

Death is what we actually ask for.