Freedom From the Known

Source: Pexels/Matthew Montrone

It seems like we’re able to identify phenomena, put them into these conceptual, semantic boxes, talk to other people about them and so on. But let's really look at this assumption and see if it holds up.

Look at your experience, at what’s presenting itself in this moment. For example, I'm hearing what I would call “sounds” right now. The sounds of traffic outside, birds chirping in my backyard. But what exactly is sound? Of course, we know exactly what it is, don’t we? It’s sound!

But look again. Feel the presence of this thing we call sound and see if you can actually determine what it is. What makes sound, sound? Don’t think about it, feel it. Exactly what is it that you are experiencing that you’re calling sound?

Listen to sound. Keep listening, keep exploring what it is. What is it that’s present that the word sound is referring to? Notice that what’s being experienced is not holding still, that the very second you think you know what it is, it has become something else.

It's a very curious thing that as we move towards some experience and try to pin it down, try to determine what it is, the phenomenon seems to move away from us. Curiously, the closer we look, the less clear it is what anything is.

It’s very clear that something is present that we’re calling sound. At the same time, it’s impossible to grasp hold of and determine what exactly it is that’s present. I could say that sound is made up of vibrations. But that begs the question, what is vibration? You see, any conclusion we might come to just leads to another question, namely what is that thing we just came to a conclusion about!

As we explore experience in this way, we discover how everything transcends what we think it is. Experience is simply too vast, too multi-dimensional and too transient to ever be pinned down conceptually. The reality is that experiences are not present long enough to come to any sort of definitive conclusion about them. This is what I mean by phenomena moving away from us as we explore their nature. If you actually feel what's here, you will feel this moving away, the slipping away of every instant. What’s appearing, by its very shape-shifting nature, transcends all ideas we might have about it.

So, if reality transcends all ideas we might have about it, then what exactly is it? Mind you, it certainly seems as if life collapses into things that are definable, that what’s here resolves as something knowable. But as you feel what’s present right now, notice how the moment never stabilizes as some “thing” that can be known or defined. Feel the freedom of that, the absolute freedom from all designations and descriptions and their seeming implications.

It turns out that our everyday life, our so-called normalcy is this freedom. The transcendent is not somewhere else, it's what’s sitting right here. I can say that "I’m" sitting here writing. But that's not really telling me what’s here, for what's actually present can't be said. The moment can look and feel like all the ways it seems to look and feel (e.g., me writing). But at the same time, it is utterly beyond all of the ways I might conceive of and describe it.

To discover the transcendental, we needn’t go somewhere else but simply be with the current perception, the one unfolding right now. We don't have to look for something else for what we’re seeing in every moment of life is completely beyond imagination, beyond comprehension, just the way it is.

Something is palpably present. Just be with that, with the concreteness of whatever’s appearing. Simply see what's being seen, perceive whatever’s being perceived. Right there in that perception, that concrete moment of perceiving, you will discover what is beyond the concrete, beyond the seemingly substantial.

The doorway into the transcendental turns out to be right here, in the felt sense of whatever’s appearing.