(I originally posted this on my Instagram two months ago. Finally trying to be more active on this blog, so re-posting)
I just finished a week of studying with an obscure sect of Buddhist monks. They’re the mystics of their tradition.
Every religion’s got mystics. They’re the crazy ones. Those who want to bypass dogma and bang on the very nature of reality itself.
They don’t want to be told about God, they don’t want to understand God, they want to intimately experience God.
This particular group has spent over a thousand years honing the practice of awakening. A process where the illusions of the mind disappear and all that is left is what is real.
Truth be told, I didn’t come here to awaken. I just wanted to be better. If you were to define me, I think that would be it.
Even if I planned to die tomorrow, I would still somehow work today on being a better version of me.
And what better way to be better than to work on your mind? It’s where it all starts. It’s where it all ends.
But…I got to taste it, this awakening. In the last two days, for brief stretches in focused meditation, I experienced a smidgen of what it was about.
Here’s what it’s like. The mind is the clouds. When they part – and you cannot force it, it’s more of an understanding, and then allowing – what is left is the mountains. They were always there. Limitless and timeless.
You experience this. But it is not you. It wasn’t Kamal who experienced it, because he is the clouds, it was like mountains experiencing themselves.
As the clouds eventually appeared again, I saw Kamal – it wasn’t a seeing you do with the eyes, it wasn’t even a feeling, it was an all-knowing. A natural love arose within.
Look, I’m already rather fond of this guy. One heck of a special human being. But it wasn’t that, it was an instantaneous recognition. And I felt compassion for him. Such sweet compassion. For his triumphs. For his suffering. For all that he is.
That’s what was left when I briefly disappeared into the truth behind it all. Love, and most of all, compassion.