What Is It That You Are Seeking

Man spends an entire life

Knowing not what he is truly seeking.

 

Grasping at straws

He moves blindly

Spending enormous effort

And wasting his life.

 

What is it that you are seeking?

 

Some may say, wealth.

There is practicality in this.

For wealth affords man significant freedoms.

 

However, if we examine the wealthiest of men,

We find that they are still seeking.

We find that a wealthy man’s life contains just as many problems as that of the poor or the middle class.

Therefore, although wealth is practical and beneficial,

It cannot be what one is truly seeking.

 

Some may say, love.

This is logical.

For to have the love of spouse and children brings with it great joy.

 

However, if we look closely at the fabric of human relationships

We discover that with “love” comes conflict, pain, heartache, and suffering.

Spouses often grow apart. Each with their own beliefs. Each with their own needs. Each with their own resentments.

Children often succumb to the culture of the world. They become poisoned by its ways. How they looked at their parents when they were children, is rarely how they look at them as adults.

“Love” thus leaves humans seeking peace, reconciliation, and wholeness.

In Truth, humans do not know love.

They know Attachment, in the name of love.

Therefore, love cannot be what one is truly seeking.

 

Some say religion and spirituality.

The reason that humans follow religion is that 1) they were proselytized since childhood, and/or 2) they seek assistance and solace from life’s assaults.

The man who has directly found god, has no use for religion. For religion is a middle man.

The man who has not found god, never finds him through religion.

Spirituality is but a clever form of religion.

It is yet another excuse to perform austerities, rituals, and penance in search of a future reward.

 

If we examine the millions of meditators, chanters, and spiritualists, we see that they are all in search of peace.

Millions have cycled through this process, yet we have seen only one Buddha.

If we look into the lives of the religious and the spiritual, we see that after decades and decades of practice, worship, meditation, and mindfulness, they are still searching.

Thus, this too has proved fruitless in providing man a permanent satisfaction.

 

Wealth, success, love, religion, and spirituality are some of the many straws that humans waste their lives grasping.

In examining the evidence, it becomes abundantly clear that the millions who have done this have not received what such things have promised them.

 

What is it that man is truly seeking?

What is it that compels him to grasp at all?

What is it that drives him to wealth, success, love, religion, and spirituality?

 

One does not seek to be mended, unless there is a wound.

One does not seek completion, unless there is a hollowness.

One does not seek wholeness, unless there is a brokenness.

 

What is it that you are truly seeking?

If it does not come by way of money, success, love, religion, or spirituality, from where will it come?

How many more years of meditation will you do?

How many more satsangs will you attend?

How many more asanas will you practice?

How many more scriptures will you read?

How many more gods will you pray to?

How many more times will you ask for love, understanding, and forgiveness from your loved ones?

How many more years will you spend in hope?

 

Love, abandons.

Wealth, abandons.

Success, abandons.

Religion, abandons.

Spirituality, abandons.

 

What, then, will you do?

If by your own examination you find that each of these has not satisfied your heart, such that no further need arises

What will you turn to next?

 

The thought might linger in your mind that there is one special prescription, austerity, or practice out there

Which if you came to know it,

Will transform your entire life.

 

This thought has captured the attention of mankind for eons.

To this day,

Not one human being has returned to tell the tale.

 

For Siddhartha himself

Did not become Buddha

Until he discovered the emptiness of all austerities, practices, and penances.

 

In the end, he died a Buddha.

While the ascetics who attempted to prescribe austerities to him

Died as ascetics.

 

What is it that you are seeking?

 

Be wary of answering quickly.

For if you do, it will be your mind that has spoken for you.

This is the reason you have been led on so many wild goose chases.

 

What is it that you are seeking?

 

Be wary of answering “me.”

For doing so, will be an act of the ego.

Which has not the capacity to satisfy any human.

 

What is it that you are seeking?

You may not know where it is.

But wisdom lies

In knowing where it is not.

 

What is it that you are seeking?

You may be neither serious or sincere.

But sincerity lies

In abandoning pretentions that one is sincere.

 

What is it that you are seeking?

 

What is it?

 

Namaste.