The Master

Having never left the house, you are looking for the way home.

-Nisargadatta Maharaj

You don’t need a spiritual master. You don’t need to sit at the feet of a guru to find satori, or enlightenment. 

If you want to know — to directly experience — a spiritual master, you needn’t look any further than the physical form in which you reside. The thing which you call “my body”. 

MY body.

Notice that you don’t call it “me”. That’s because you are not the body. What you are, in truth, is something more fundamental than the fingers at the end of your arm, than the eyes on your face, than the hair growing on your head.

Who is the one who observes this physical body? Who is it who observes everything that your body perceives? Can you sit so quietly, in such stillness, that you can sense the observer of all the sensations which you experience in your body?

If your body was “you”, wouldn’t you be the one driving it? Wouldn’t you be in control? In fact, you are a slave to the body that you inhabit. This body has its own consciousness. When it is hungry, you give it food. When it is thirsty, you give it water. When it is tired, it sleeps. When it needs to poo, well, you listen…promptly. 

It’s easy to think that your body is YOU, that YOU are your body, that YOU are in the driver’s seat… until you eat some bad fish, or until you haven’t slept in three days. Then it becomes obvious that you are simply a servant of this physical form. You are a witness, not a participant.

The personality that you’ve spent your life cultivating does everything it can to resist and change the physical form in which you reside. You muffle burps, choke back tears, swallow anger, force a smile. Everything possible to fetter the natural flow of the body in order to fit into a mold deemed “proper” by a society which you did not create. Resist, resist, resist. Change, change, change.

There is no better reminder of the slave you truly are than when you’re doing everything you can to hold back your impending diarrhea (and trying to play it cool) while your date drives you home. 

You are a slave to the physical form.

Does that make you feel out of control? Does that make you feel anxious? As well, it should. 

But there’s a gift hiding here. THE gift. 

You are residing within a spiritual master, a guru, if only you’ll open your eyes to it. Your body is an enlightened sage, and you have direct access to it. Lucky you!

Taoist sages sang the praises of Wu Wei, or effortless action…sometimes referred to as “non-action”. It’s not “non-action” because nothing happens, but because we don’t have to TRY, to PUSH, to FORCE. Wu Wei is…effortless.

What is more effortless than the heart beating inside your chest? What is more effortless than the food digesting inside your stomach? What is more effortless than the landscape tapestry that your eyes are perceiving? What is more effortless than surrendering to a good night’s sleep? What is more effortless than picking up a pleasant fragrance lingering in the air?

Do your thoughts arise before or after the actions taken by your body? Did you make the choice to read this or did your mind merely justify the Wu Wei with thoughts only milliseconds after the fact? 

Are you sure?

You don’t need to go to a sage or a guru to experience enlightenment. You needn’t look any further than the perceived bounds of your body’s skin.

You are consciousness experiencing consciousness. Consciousness (awareness) residing within a perceived physical form…which itself, too, is consciousness.

Awareness nested within awareness, observing and witnessing another aspect of itself. How much more spiritual, how much more awake, can it get?

But the conditioned mind, the created personality, resists the Wu Wei of the body. The mind is the enemy of enlightenment…the only true barrier.

Just look at your dog or your cat…or even a small child. We adore them precisely because they express this Wu Wei so perfectly. Unhindered. Unrestricted. They do exactly what arises, exactly as it arises. They do not hesitate, do not worry what others will think, do not fear judgment. They are free. Now, ask yourself: are you? Are you free?

Why not? 

The answer is your mind.

This lifetime you’ll spend inside this body is a grand opportunity. It’s an opportunity to sit at the feet (or inside the feet, as it is) of a sage carrying ancient wisdom. It’s an opportunity to allow — to experience — the body’s Wu Wei in all its flowing glory. 

To watch what arises, to let it come, to be with it…fully. To give yourself to it…completely. Without the interference of the mind.

That is the immense gift of this life. A gift that few take advantage of.

Is it enlightenment you seek?

Salvation from your suffering?

Abiding joy?

True oneness with God? 

It’s already here…nearer than the tip of your nose.