What Remains?

I hear a lot of people say “I’m still suffering.” They understand the basic points that are being communicated, but claim that suffering is still present.

Saying “I’m still suffering” is like saying “I’m still twenty.” I remember being twenty, but I’m not twenty right now. Likewise, I remember a time that I suffered, but I’m not suffering right now. So why say it that way: “I’m still…”? You’re not still anything.

But unlike twenty, suffering will return – we can be sure of that. So what you’re really saying is, “I know suffering will return, and I’m afraid of it,” or “…I’m averse to that.” But you don’t similarly say, “I know pleasure will return, and I’m excited about that.” For some reason, we have a tendency to focus on the bad thing that will return, and not the good.

Both will return, and you can’t stop them. Suffering and pleasure come and go, constantly. Seekers make the mistake of thinking that there is some “permanent state” that is “reached,” wherein no suffering exists, and they want that.

But there is no such state. Everything happens. Great joys and great sorrows; sickness and health; weddings and funerals; having prosperity and not having it; tiny disappointments and tiny miracles. This is life in a body.

But the definition of the quality of life in a body is derived wholly in imagination. The body-mind’s story of good and bad – of suffering and pleasure – is its own little private affair. Everything that “happens” is given a value, by the body-mind, based on how it effects that very body-mind. It’s a closed system. It invents itself, then defines its own pleasure, and defines its own suffering.

Where are you in this story? Are you the one affected by the imaginary story? Are you the one making up the imaginary story? Are you watching the whole imaginary story unfold from somewhere outside of it? How do you sort yourself out from what is being fabricated? How do you find what is real about you, and not imagined?

You have to just start by looking for it: What is not imagination? Suffering can’t touch you, except in imagination; so your interest should be in finding that in you which is not imagination. Look for this. Look for the unwavering, quiet voice that does not derive its identity from the imagination of a body-mind. In this "non-imagination," the story can be left behind as irrelevant to you – simply not important.

I can’t tell you how. I can’t define it. I can’t even “find” it for myself. But what I can do is live knowing that the suffering and pleasure that comes and goes constantly is defined by something imaginary and is not anything I need to pay attention to.

How do I know? In my experience, there is something here that is not identified with the story of the body-mind. It was very quiet at first, and later became more obvious as I gave it voice. It is peace. It is eternal, right now. It is who I am, and I need not worry about what passes through the life of the body-mind.

So look for yourself and see that there is something, already present in you, which is not the imagination – which does not pass. Discard all thoughts that arise – they are imaginary and simply pass. Same with all feelings, sensations, experiences – they are also imaginary, passing, and only exist in the closed loop of the story of the body-mind, for the body-mind, made up by the body-mind. Discard all of that.

What remains? Just look.