Wanting Is Over

If I got exactly what I think I want today, how long would I feel fulfilled? A week? An hour? A minute? Would I not wake tomorrow morning with the same restless desire, the same anxious wanting, that isn't quite sure what it wants?

This restlessness is what Buddha called "dukkha," often crudely translated as "suffering." The first Noble Truth: our human experience is pervaded by "dukkha." But "dukkha" is much more subtle and subversive than blatant pain. It is a ceaseless subliminal anxiety beneath my persona of comfortable habits and smiles.

"Dukkha" is a voice that constantly complains, never realizing that what it really wants is relief from its own whining. What the mind really wants is Silence.

True Silence is not the absence of noise, but the taste of eternity. I don't have to wait til the end of my life to taste eternity. I cant taste the Divine Presence right now, at the end of this breath, at the beginning of the next breath. And when I behold this world of creatures, I can taste this silent Presence as the sparkle of pure existence that charges every creature that is. For the simple is-ness of a creature is its divinity. Whatever the outward form of a thing, its very is-ness is always perfect, inviolable and full of bliss.

How deluded I am when I try to derive satisfaction from the form, rather than the pure existence, of anything. The priceless gift of pure existence infuses and enfolds each creature in the world, no matter how fallen, how broken, how despised. And when I am awake, I encounter the is-ness of a creature before I see it's thing-ness, and I know that it has the same infinite value as my own is-ness.

Yes, we can greet the infinite un-created Being of a thing before we encounter its creatureliness.

Divine Silence sparkles in an acorn, a rotting carcass, a leaf of clover, a human face, a dog turd, a passing rain cloud. Every creature is a locus of Divine Existence, surcharged with the light of God. All we need are the eyes to see.

After lifetimes of seeking, I know that what I seek is merely the suchness of whatever is. Every dust mote is a celebration of God's presence. I am drunk with the ecstasy of mere Being, and my mind is so clear!

Wisely does Patanjali say in the Yoga Sutras, "Heyyam dukkham anaghatam." "Avoid the suffering that has not yet come." We dissolve tomorrow's "dukkha" by immersing in the miracle of the present moment, overwhelmed with gratitude.