This Thoughtless Life

who knew it could be so good

Cestello Annunciation by Sandro Botticelli, 1489

If you’re anything like me, your mind is sometimes hyperactive. The stream of thoughts can become hectic, unruly, entirely absorbed within itself.

Which sucks.

In Buddhism, this is what’s known as papañca: the unhelpful and unskillful proliferation of mental output.

For me, the most effective way to “eject” from this rumination is by unhooking awareness from thought—to borrow a phrase from Buddhist nondual teacher Loch Kelly.

Rather than identifying with your thoughts, you shift to a state of open and non-judgmental awareness.

You can taste this freedom as easily as you can shift your focus from reading to being aware of the sensations in your left hand. 

Instead of thinking, you merely sense. Ideally with an explorer’s mindset, playing with the underrated joy of bouncing awareness between your five faculties of perception. Feel the tips of your toes against the ground, experience how your ears hear without any effort, realize that your entire visual field is already within your awareness. You didn't have to “try” for any of it!

And then, maybe, you can be aware of your sense of space—in your body, in the room, and, yes, the universe.

This approach is radical precisely because it’s what we were all born with, and we’ve somehow forgotten. Most of us spend considerable time and effort attempting to reduce the suffering in our minds with calming techniques or thought and attitude adjustments. Sometimes, these approaches work, at least on the surface level.

This method, however—simply unhooking your awareness—embraces what already is. Your field of vision is already within sight. The wind rustling is already tickling your eardrums. Freshly cut grass always smells like freshly cut grass—you don’t have to reach for it. That is the point of this way of living: there’s a part of you that’s already free. Already calm, spacious, and alert.

Rather than adding to or subtracting from your current thoughts or beliefs, then, you’re jumping into the presence of sense and space—of “awake awareness.” Just as many bodyworkers will ask you to begin by identifying where in your body actually feels good and expand that feeling from there—so too does this method ask you to embrace what your mind and body are already doing so well. Existing here right now. The light switch is already flipped on.

When you’re aware of the totality—effortlessly noticing all your thoughts, senses, and environment all at once—with each part in its “part-ness” and in its relation to the whole, you enter the mystical territory of “oneness” we’re all after.

The funny thing is, nothing is more ordinary. You begin to realize, then, that the real “altered state” is constantly yielding to the Mini Me inside your head, the one nipping at your heels, or berating you for not having done your taxes.

Everyone, and I mean everyone, has at one time or another felt this simultaneous presence and absence. To be honest, it feels pretty dope. The secret of that dopeness, of that relief, is that “it”—like your field of vision and the sounds tickling your eardrums—is already here.