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The Daily Dharma – April 17, 2021

Three brightly colored apricots on a branch dripping with water after a shower.

Continuing from The Untethered Soul . . .

It starts to become a serious question: “Who am I? Who is having all of these physical, emotional, and mental experiences?” So you contemplate this question a little deeper. This is done by letting go of the experiences and noticing who is left. You will begin to notice who is experiencing the experience. Eventually, you will get to a point within yourself where you realize that you, thee experiencer, have a certain quality. And that quality is awareness, consciousness, an intuitive sense of existence . . .

To make this more experiential, let’s try a consciousness experiment. Notice that with a single glance at a room, or out a window, you instantaneously see the full detail of everything that’s in front of you. You are effortlessly aware of all the objects that are within the scope of your vision, both near and far away. Without moving your head or eyes, you perceived all the intricate detail of what you immediately see. Look at all the colors, the variations of light, the grain of wood furniture, the architecture of buildings, and the variations of bark and leaves on trees. Notice that you take this all in at once, without having to think about it. No thought is necessary; you just see it. Now try to use thoughts to isolate, label, and describe all the intricate detail of what you see. How long would it take your mental voice to describe all that detail to you, versus the instantaneous snapshot of consciousness just seeing? When you just look without creating thoughts, you consciousness is effortlessly aware of, and fully comprehends, all that it sees.

To be continued . . .

Three Apricots Image Seamus Berkeley

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