may29

Can I be the space for the constantly flowing river of sensations, thoughts and feelings, without reacting to any of them?

After all, they are all essentially misleading. They are all essentially based on false premises, assumptions, judgments.

Sometimes it feels lonely, less human in a way, to detach from them. But those are judgments too, generating feelings, sensations that are judged as uncomfortable, unwanted. Can I embrace and be with these when they arise, and let them come and go too?

What happens when I am the river, when I stabilize as that witnessing flow rather than the passing contents carried in its wake?

In a way, I disappear. No longer am I the particular contents of memories, beliefs, impulses, wants, needs, labels, forms, which are all there as a result of incidental past causes. These all come and go in what I now am, which is spaciousness itself. That which holds and sees it all.

So then, if the contents of the river no longer prompt action, what does?

Something still does. Something still must. Otherwise this body would just waste away, no longer responding to impulses to move and feed. Deep down, underlying impulses cause it all to go on regardless.

It can be desire that fuels continued existence. Persisting because there remains something to experience, do, or attain in the river.

Habit can serve as fuel. Simply getting used to doing certain things and responding to signals and rituals - eating, bathing, socializing, working, smiling. So they continue until energy dries up.

Fear can serve as fuel. Reacting to imaginings of what could follow letting go. If thoughts of loss, death, oblivion, prove too threatening to permit.

Love can also serve as fuel. Acting out of affection for what appears in the river.

Joy can serve as fuel. Playing with the contents.

Acceptance can serve as fuel. Not minding.

Maybe even curiosity. Maybe sometimes some and sometimes others. Just another impermanent and ever-shifting aspect of the constant rivering.

Or maybe something deeper than all this. Something undetectable, indefinable and entirely impersonal.

Lately there are recurring thoughts of something in particular, and these thoughts have been linked to and generated by feelings, sensations, stirred up by past causes. There's an impulse to do something about them and in response to them. In a way, to remedy and dissipate the thoughts, feelings, and sensations, and to generate different ones. Let's say more pleasant or desirable seeming ones.

To do this, though, would be to be misled by the impressions in the river. Every act generates more thoughts, feelings, sensations in the river. Pleasant and unpleasant, desirable and undesirable. Acting on them never truly remedies them, never truly dissipates them. Acting on them doesn't lead to freedom but deeper bondage as more thoughts, feelings, and sensations are generated to contend with.

The way to liberation is simply to be with what's here now, to let it come and go, again and again and again if they must, until their energies run dry and they dissipate from a lack of engagement. Engagement energizes and multiplies the contents. Detached awareness dissolves them. Belief in them solidifies and makes them real. Seeing into their ephemerality and unreality renders them meaningless and powerless.

When awareness is fixated on certain contents, perception and experience is narrowed by and onto them. Particular thoughts, feelings, sensations, obscure the vastness of the river streaming by all around.

The apparent objects of desire, fixation, are more like symbols than realities. Because reality is the river. Reality is not things, not even people. It is all part of the rivering, no thing as fixed as it can appear in the form of thoughts, appearances, words. No nouns at all, but only verbs. Really, the one Verb appearing as many. This one great procession of Life-ing.

Lately there is a recurring yearning for a particular symbol, and for particular experiences with this symbol. The attainment of and engagement with the symbol represents fulfillment, but it cannot truly provide this. The lack of fulfillment in the first place is a misperception generated by thoughts, feelings, sensations, judgments and interpretations themselves. Lack is not really there, cannot be, since all is contained in a single, unifying, and boundariless wholeness. It's a red herring. A wild goose chase.

The river of Life continues to flow all around these thoughts, feelings, sensations, judgments, interpretations, but It's vastness is largely missed, ignored, while the eye of awareness lingers on the mental symbol and the fantasies, feelings and sensations emerging alongside it.

In a sense, it's a choice. Choose to be the river and let it all come and go as it will, knowing that none of it is really as it appears to be. Or choose to dive in and swim among the contents, the projected symbols, and try to have my way with them as a symbol myself. Pursuing some and escaping others, liking some and disliking others, embracing some and condemning others.

One choice leads to relaxation, acceptance, peace, contentment. The other to stress, resistance, stimulation, and inevitable frustration. One choice leads to openness and equanimity, the other to constricting, narrowing and endless vicissitudes of highs and lows, gains and losses, successes and failures.

It's a choice, or rather, a perpetual choosing.

So, what will it be this time?