All Things Are Perfectly Resolved in Your Notionless Being - 12th February 2018

The taste of your own being is never disappointing. Well, it can seem disappointing sometimes if you feel like it has to taste a certain way. If you go to the Ganga—and now is Kumbha Mela, you could go to the bank and drink the water from it, as it was very much a popular thing to do—but if you drink a sip from the Ganga and expect it to feel like Gatorade or something, then you will be disappointed. There's a big clue as to why water continues to be the most popular. You can make so many tastes in it and do so much with it now, and yet, in all of those tastes, we can have enough. But which is water itself? Nobody says, "I'm tired of tasting water." This is your being. Although it is empty of quality, this is your very essence. And because it is empty of quality, it is not tiring. Because all qualities, even if they are the most sublime things, if you have too much of it, it becomes tiring.

You know the truth. I told this back a long time ago. I mean, I still really enjoy this, but I felt like just after ten days of ginger, lemon, honey, I thought, "Can I just have some water?" No matter what the taste is, I joke sometimes, even if it is the angels playing the harp, if you have to hear it all the time, you say, "Please, just some silence here." This qualityless existence is your very nature. You have played with qualities. You played the game of desire and aversion, and now we are becoming done with this game. All appearances come and go as they wish. Let them go. See and be the witness of all things. What is here for me to accept or renounce? All things come and go as waves on the ocean, which is my very Self.

Many times, as we take the break on Friday evening, I say to everyone, "May all of you have a concept-free weekend." Today being a Monday, I want to actually say to all of us: may we all have a concept-free week. It's a worthwhile experiment. If the great Zen master Bankei said, "All things are perfectly resolved in the Unborn," what does this mean? This has been equal to the taste of the water itself. You don't buy the story for a while. You don't activate these notions about yourself. It is naturally present. This being, this consciousness, what the Zen master would call the Unborn mind. Another way to put it is that all things are perfectly resolved in your notionless being, your own Self as existence.