The Art of Not Arriving: What Remains (Part III)
Here then,
Form is no other than emptiness,
Emptiness no other than form.
Form is only emptiness,
Emptiness only form.
— The Heart Sutra
Not Two
To recognise yourself as absolute transparency does not mean standing apart from life, captured as transparency alone.
The absolute is not in opposition to form, nor unity to separation. One breathes as another. It is not a binary: not “if not this, then that.” It is always both, and neither captures wholly.
It does not mean you now must become indifferent or detached.
It does not mean negating the play of form.
Because you are that form too.
To recognise yourself as transparency is to completely ease into all of it, including everything that you have habitually resisted.
For so long, there have been things you have objected to. Things in yourself. Things in the world.
You have objected based on stories of who you are, what things mean, what should or shouldn’t be.
And so, there has been a subtle strategy against life. A strategy against certain experiences.
But this transparency, this absolute openness that you are, does not reject anything.
It does not reject the dream, the game, the movement of forms.
And yet, this does not mean that by not rejecting, it approves of everything either. The mind cannot bear emptiness, and so it seeks resolution by swinging to the opposite.
This also does not mean there will be no pain.
It does not mean there will be no grief, no anger, no sorrow, no shame that have yet to be seen.
It does not mean movements won’t arise, perhaps movements toward action, toward change.
And if so - rise, act, change, in accordance with,
and as a living embodiment of, the relative truths available right now,
without needing to carry them beyond what they are for now,
without turning them into an eternal measuring stick for all of creation.
Let what is be the throne of righteousness,
without silencing the voice that sings this here and now.
Don’t fold the relative into the absolute.
And don’t stretch the absolute into the relative.
Reality is both,
without clinging to either, without turning from either.
All of it, every arising, every movement, every experience, is already allowed… held in gentle curiosity and presence, without needing to extract some ultimate truth from it.
There is no need to divide against yourself.
There is no need to strategize against what is, although you can play a game of strategising within what is.
Because there is no experience, no arising, that is outside of what you are.
And when this is revealed within you clearly, something completely softens.
Not because all discomfort disappears. Not because all struggle ceases.
But because even discomfort and struggle no longer need to be rejected.
What remains when all distance is revealed as absent is not a state, but the closer-than-your-heartbeat intimacy of wholeness with itself we call love.
This is the “paradox” of the awakened heart:
You long, and you are whole.
You desire, and you are free.
You ache, and you are safe.
Everything is already appearing in and as this openness. Everything is already included.
You were never apart from it. You were never outside of it.
So the game of resistance, of opposition, of dividing yourself into “this” and “not this,” “me” and “not me,” is revealed - with nobody to exit the game, and only the game remaining.
And all that remains is the total openness to experience everything, without the need to hold anything apart from yourself.
It is the celebration of infinity, playing as movement without having ever moved.
The You-as-Reality Way
If we follow this realisation into its ultimate depth, it becomes palpably evident that there is nothing to escape, nowhere to go, nothing to be rid of.
You are experiencing everything. Not just as this body, as this world, this lifetime, but as existence itself.
Not in any mental way
of holding an experience or understanding,
but in the most intimate,
raw,
tasteful,
melt-into-yourself,
reaching-for-death-but-stumbling…
into-rebirth-as-nothingness,
breath-against-bone,
the-farthest-inward-ocean-of-all-that-can-be,
the-undeclared-vastness
and aching, unprotected tenderness way -
the you-as-reality,
the embodied clarity way.
There is no part of reality that is foreign to you.
No aspect of existence that is separate from you.
No moment with everything that it dances as,
anywhere or ever,
that is not already arising as you.
You are experiencing everything. Not as a central identity that “contains” all experience, but as the boundless centreless openness that conjures itself as all experience, without needing to own, name, or understand any of it and then report it to itself as a centre.
The only reason it seems like you are not experiencing everything is because the mind expects an experience of experiencing everything. It assumes that to experience totality, there must be a someone who holds it all, perceives it all, remembers it all. But totality that you are has no objective centre as a mystical ego-hub. It has no boundary. It has no single reference point to measure itself against.
And even then, no experience of experiencing everything would capture you, define you, exhaust you. It would be just another dance, another form. As with any form, it comes at the expense of another. So would your experience of experiencing everything come at the cost of experiencing your world, or any world, as it is, right here and now.
The truth is, you are already the absolute transparency which unfolds as the richness of form, without needing to grasp, capture or reference any of it.
You are unfathomable freedom. Nothing exists prior to you.
Nothing can define how you “really” are to the exclusion of its opposite.
Your native tongue is paradox.
You are every possible experience as form - all at once and each in separation, at the same time - and yet none of them, but the emptiness, the generative mystery that gives rise to itself as all, unable to capture or contain itself as pure emptiness.
You are ever-free from containment.
Even by yourself.
Sobriety
Truth - the nature of reality you are - is not a belief.
Not a philosophy.
Not an idea to be considered, debated or accepted.
It is the most direct, unshakable sobriety of reality itself.
It does not need to be proven.
It does not need to be established.
It does not need a single word or thought to validate it.
It is simply what is.
What you are - this infinite transparency, this unmoving presence, this absolute clarity - needs no confirmation.
It requires no logic to be derived, no evidence to be defended.
It does not depend on a process of realisation, nor a journey of awakening.
It does not need you to “see” it, because it is already seeing.
It does not need you to “arrive” at it, because it has never not been here.
It does not need to be spoken, yet it is undeniable.
It is not hidden, yet it cannot be grasped.
It is the absolute clarity of being, prior to all movement, free of all seeking, untouched by all appearances.
Nothing can prove it, because nothing exists outside of it.
Nothing can threaten it, because it is not a thing.
Nothing can capture it, because it is not an object.
Nothing can add to it or take from it, because it is already total.
And when this is seen, not as an intellectual conclusion, not as a mystical insight,
but as absolute, intimate sobriety,
there is no longer a question,
no longer a search.
The game of movement, of seeking, of past and future collapses.
Not because something ends,
but because it’s seen that nothing was ever happening in the first place.
And Yet…
Even after clarity arises, even after it’s seen, without doubt,
that there is nothing but you,
that in seeing, you are the seeing;
in hearing, you are the hearing;
in loving, you are the loving itself –
Even then, the mind’s habits do not simply vanish.
Thoughts continue to do what they do: dance.
They form descriptions.
They refine understandings.
They draw subtle lines around what this is, or is not.
“This is how it is… and yet, also isn’t.”
“This is what I’ve come to see… and yet, also haven’t.”
“This is what reality is like… and also isn’t.”
And if gravity draws the centreless you into the seduction of thought,
that too is part of the enchanting dance of self-love.
But no description, no matter how subtle or beautiful, is the thing itself.
Not because explanation is wrong.
Not because refinement is bad.
But because reality does not need to be captured to be real.
At this point, even the finest articulations become like flowers on the altar of reality -
offered in reverence and devotion,
not mistaken for truth,
yet made of truth.
There is no need to shush them away.
No need to stop the dance of the mind.
There is only the effortless recognition…
that nothing needs to be held onto,
nothing needs to be named - yet it may be, a thousandfold,
nothing needs to be captured - yet it may be, in infinite forms.
The dance of describing keeps unfolding,
the gesture of meaning blooming -
not to grasp, but to sing,
not to define, but to kiss the mystery in passing.
Freedom.
Reality is.
You are.
But don’t take my word for truth.
There is only one being in your world who can reveal itself as truth.
You.