On The Path

 Sitting Is It

All the time you’re looking for the next step. But every step you take, in a way, is away from what is already there. How to get from where you are sitting to where you are sitting?

Participant: I’m already there.

Yes, you are. So since everybody is already there, every step is away from it. But you never believe that. You think, “Well, what step do I need to take in order to realise that I don’t have a step to take? What meditation is the best meditation to do in order to show me that there’s no step to take? I can accept what you say, Michael. Please give me a special meditation - which I will then refuse to do - just so I can feel that polarity again and the need to solve it.”

It is a question of simply sinking deeper and deeper into where you are sitting so that you really know that you are sitting and you are doing nothing else but sitting.

There’s a beautiful saying in Zen - ‘One sits, not to get somewhere, one sits because sitting is it’. Sitting is it. It doesn’t feel like it when it is not it, but in the end it is.

There’s a beautiful Zen poem:

Sitting quietly, doing nothing spring comes and the grass grows by itself

Your spring comes. Your grass grows by itself.

Stillness and silence are the basis of your nature, and you may find, when you go back to the world and your lives, that it’s stronger in you than it was before. So when things are not going well, close your eyes, or whatever you want to do, and see if you can return to the silence, and that will give you the connection with yourself and with everything.

All the time we come back to this place of silence, because whatever we might do - mandalas, group work, small group work, personal energy sessions and so on - all this is to make the journey to the stillness and silence easier. They have no real value in themselves. They come and they go. You have great experiences, and they disappear. But when you find the stillness and silence it is yours forever.

From “With It”, 2003.