Event updates…
There are still a few spots left for my London events next week. I’m doing an evening talk (7-9 pm) on July 5th and a daylong event (10 am - 4 pm) on July 6th. Email john@johnastin.com for further details or to register.
For those who don’t know, I host a weekly inquiry meeting on Zoom (no charge) every Sunday, 10 am Pacific time. Here is the link. PLEASE NOTE: There will be no meeting on Sunday, July 7th as I will be traveling that day.
LIKE WRITING YOUR NAME ON WATER
Contrary to how we tend to hold things and what our language systems strongly reinforce, our perceptions have no actual enduring nature. Just look right now at whatever’s being perceived and notice that as soon as it seems to be here, it’s gone, freed in the instant of its arising.
All of our experiences, including those we think of as problematic are actually here for no time, strange as that may sound. It’s very curious, because it sure seems like things are here for some amount of time, right? I mean, here it is, the whole world of circumstance and experience we seem to inhabit. But, if we feel into the dynamic nature of what’s appearing, it becomes quite clear, just how unstable and ultimately unfindable everything is.
Even though we talk about phenomena as if they are things that can be identified, they’re really not owing to reality’s ever-changing nature. Experiences are not things that actually endure over time. They are, if anything, a ceaseless flow, a constant flowering but one that never arrives as any fixed bloom. Feel the flow of experiencing and notice that it's impossible to stop whatever seems to be here from becoming something else.
Let’s say you’ve been sitting and reading these words for the last 5 minutes. Where are those 5 minutes now? Gone, right? The last 4 minutes, 3 minutes, 2 minutes, 1 minute? Gone. The last 30 seconds? Gone. The last 1 second? Gone. The last one-one millionth of a second? Gone.
Ask yourself, how long is this perception actually here for? Does it last for any time at all? In one sense we have this feeling of the moment being sort of stretched out across time, which is how we can speak to one another and not merely encounter it as these infinitesimally small blips that last for a flash instant (if even that). No, we have the sense of something we call a conversation taking place over time. But it's strange because what we call the “flow of time” is always being encountered now, in other words, outside of time.
In psychospiritual circles, we hear much talk about the value of “letting go” (of the past, of our mental narratives, our attachments, and so on). And yet, the very nature of reality is to let go. Each momentary perception is literally set free in the instant of its arising. Feel that, the spontaneous, effortless release of each moment.
The Tibetans have a lovely way to describe the release of each moment. They say it's like writing your name on water. If I were to write my name on water, I’d begin by writing the letter “J.” But as that letter was starting to form, it would at the same time be losing its form, the letter literally vanishing in the process of its seeming to take shape.
It’s strange because we have this experience of actually perceiving phenomena that are present, identifiable and describable. And yet, if we look, as I’ve been inviting you to do here, we literally find no fixed perceptions for what seems to appear is simultaneously disappearing, like a line drawn in water.
Things seem to have continuity. But from this other perspective, phenomena have zero duration. Feel the freedom of that, the absolute freedom of each seeming perception, liberating itself no sooner than it appears.
As spiritual practitioners, we may think, “I'm going to sit here and let go of things as they arise. I’m going to practice not holding too tightly to my experience.” Of course, it’s fine to do that. But in many ways, we’re just playing a game for there isn’t actually something even present to release hold of because the moment has already fled, before we even try to let it go. In that sense, what we imagine we’re letting go of cannot even be found!
Try right now to grasp hold of now, try to hold on to the current perception. Can you pull it off? Can you take the moment and hold it in your hands, look at it, notice it, define it? No, because it is already vanished! Like a like drawn in water…
This is literally what we're experiencing, the absolute ungraspable nature of everything, the reality that what we call the moment is slipping through our fingers far faster than we could possibly imagine.
Already gone. That’s maybe the best way to describe the so-called present moment.
This is why what’s here can't actually bind us because it's here for no time. It looks like it's here. But it’s really mirage-like. Palpably present, yes. And yet, paradoxically, impossible to find. We approach the moment in order to locate it but it moves away, like a receding horizon that we can never reach. Unknowable, unfindable and yet here, somehow.
You don't have to go anywhere to discover what I'm pointing to because it's your current, immediate experience. It’s not some special perception but what's being perceived right now. Freedom in every perception. Reality, always present and yet constantly dissolving. Like a like drawn in water.
Very beautiful John. Thank you 💚
So beautiful John, so perfect.