Awareness is what we are.

But we block it with self-centered thinking, with dreaming, with fantasizing, with whatever it is we want to do.

Trying to be aware is just ordinary thinking, not awareness.
All we have to do is to be aware of our self-centered thoughts.

Finally they drift away, and we're just here.


--- from "Nothing Special" by Charlotte Joko Beck

There's "just what's happening"

With no one (separate)
To know "it".

no one to suffer any thing

In direct perceiving, there is no separation.

No perceiver, no perceived,

Only perceiv-ING.

You ARE the Aware-ing which IS

Your real being is the 'I'-less, timeless, ever-present radiance of non-conceptual being-awareness---completely evident and inescapable.


--- John Wheeler

Your true nature is to be acknowledged non-conceptually, without reference to thought or anything else.

Q: Aren't I supposed to always know the truth of my being?

A: You are present and aware. This is undeniable. It is not to be known or sought as if it is some special object or state. It is the ever-present basis of all experiences. How many thoughts can you have without the presence of awareness? It is so evident that it does not even need to be known, really. It is pointed out and simply acknowledged. Without thinking, seeking, or finding, you are that.


--- title and dialogue from "clear in your heart" by John Wheeler

all there is

Awareness cannot be known objectively

because it is not an object,

but neither can it be unknown---

for the same reason.


--- John Wheeler

We try to grasp something in a story that cannot be found in a story.

I look for the form of awareness---the thought, perception, sensation, etc.---that will liberate me,

but liberation is FROM attachment to any particular form, so that no form that is grasped can provide what I seek from it:

a non-dwelling awareness that does not grasp [cling].


--- from "the world is made of stories" by David R. Loy

no thing has any self-being of its own

The most important matter in Zen practice

is to come to a clear and unmistakable EXPERIENCE

of the fact that all things of the phenomenal world,

myself included,

are totally void....


This is Satori.


--- Koun Yamada (David R. Loy's late Zen teacher)