Contemplations

Am I the seeker or that which is aware of seeking?

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Is there a doer here? Is there a victim? Or are there only spontaneous happenings, completely free of a separate-self identity?

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Who is breathing these breaths? What is it that is seeing this landscape of rock, soil and plant-life?

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Is there a separate individual here who has these personality traits, lifestyle preferences and idiosyncrasies? Or are they just a temporary appearance, like a cloud appearing and disappearing?

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What meaning does the body have if there is no doer?

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Does ownership and control really exist? Is this body mine? Is there a “me” who has a life?

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Who is this “I” that is aware of this moment?

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I’ve always been fascinated by contemplating questions. There is something profound about sitting with the not-knowing. Contemplating an unanswered question has a penetrating quality, that digs below the surface of the thoughts I imagined were true.

I think this is why I have been drawn towards self-inquiry as a spiritual practice. It seems to suit my nature.

Sitting with a question creates a spaciousness and silence that can be both scary and beautiful. To not-know is like having our sense of control being stripped away. Yet it’s precisely that powerlessness to have an answer that opens us up to something deeper and more mysterious - a knowing that does not depend upon the thoughts of the mind.

I’ve always loved this quote by Rilke and it seems like an appropriate way to conclude:

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke