I can understand how it would be confusing. The nature of the mind is that it wants to come up with something fixed and arrive at a conclusion – 'this is what it’s all about, this is truth in this neat little box.'

But obviously, it’s not like, because if it were that obvious to the mind, then actually, it would be boring and take all the mystery out of it; it would be a dead, flat concept, or a belief system that you could chuck out when you get bored.

What we are talking about isn’t actually truth, because it’s not a particular philosophy or something that is true. There’s not an opposite to ‘true’; there’s not ‘false’. All of these things are just expressions; they are not interpretations. The mind can’t interpret it; it tries but it can’t, so every word that comes out of anyone’s mouth, whether it’s yours, or any teacher’s, is just an expression of it.

And still the mind tries to understand what it all means and where it’s coming from, but they are all just expressions and none of it means anything.

That’s all the mind can know; the mind can only ever know that I don’t know. It’s that simple.

Because somehow you have believed at some point that it is more complicated than it is. You’ve heard all these great people, who have had great experiences and written great books and taught great lessons, which have formed a certain opinion about what it all means; but all of this is not trusting that you already don’t know. No matter what anyone else says, you still don’t know.

Yes, that’s what I mean by not trusting the fact that you don’t know is just the way it is. That’s it. There’s this idea that you should know and that everyone else knows, and you couldn’t possibly know. But actually, the knowing of not knowing is exactly the same as it is for any great teacher.

No, it’s not an attitude.

But now we are starting to sound complicated again; saying it is a profound knowledge puts it on some pedestal, which makes it unreachable.

That is true in many cases but it is not true that it always has to be like that. I have met several people where it wasn’t.

But as I have also said, before I did any of that, I always knew this. I have always known this; as a child I knew it but I believed a thought that said, there’s something wrong with me because I don’t know who I am and I should know.

So I went searching to find out who I am, to find an identity because I didn’t find one here. I tried on lots of different identities including spiritual identities. Not knowing who I am was never interrupted, so when I came across Dolano, a female teacher in India, I realized that what she was pointing to was what I had actually always known, all the time; it had never changed. It was like, oh, ok, this searching for some identity is not actually necessary. All that effort and depression and suicidal tendencies were in a way, according to Dolano, only a maturing.

So maybe that’s true, that it was some kind of maturing in seeing. But I didn’t really need to do all of that at all; it’s just that I didn’t know what else to do.

Yes, possibly.

Yes. It seems like that for some people; it becomes thicker in some cases than for others, but there’s no rhyme or reason to it. It just seems that some people seem to take it very seriously, and don’t necessarily have much inclination to see beyond it or to see who they really are; for others, there is a bug in them that won’t let them rest until they know who they are. They can see the falsity in all of this.

And you think you should?

So that’s why I am asking you. Do you think you should have total acceptance?

Maybe the question could be slightly different. What do you want?

And not feel depressed and that it’s all kind of pointless?

You said that you felt that the search was definitely over but it doesn’t sound like it. It would be interesting to be honest about that because if you think this feeling of pointlessness is wrong, then you are still searching to fix it. There’s nothing wrong with that but it’s about being honest about what’s going on.

Yes, it does get subtler. You know there is nothing you can do, and nothing matters, and there’s no point, and there’s no one here – you know all of that. There’s no point to reading anything anymore, or practising anymore...

Yes. There’s no point to it all. So now what? What do I do with this? There’s no solution to that thought.

What seems to have happened is that thought has hijacked this whole thing and turned it into some kind of attitude – there’s no point in doing anything, and so on. That’s only an attitude. You may well have recognized that there is no point ultimately to anything but since then, thought has hijacked it and claimed it and turned it into a new belief system.

It’s subtle like that. Because actually recognizing that there is no point is freedom. And it’s freedom to even be depressed or to be joyful and yet there’s no point in those either.

So, what I would say is that in just being honest with what’s actually happening, that’s already loosening it, you know.

Yes, it’s true. Poor me, being a victim… It’s just exposing the story that loosens it.

You know how I like to see this – it’s a never-ending losing and what I mean by that is whenever thought somehow hijacks something, or finds some landing place or comes up with some idea that it has arrived somewhere, ‘I’ve got it’ or even ‘I’ve lost it’, then it’s just about the seeing of that again and again and again, seeing that it is just a thought.

And that losing each time can be painful, can be uncomfortable, embarrassing, humiliating, frightening, all of that. But that’s the cracking, the unraveling.

Thought is constantly judging other thought, saying I don’t like that thought, I don’t like that experience – thought is constantly judging everything. So I find it interesting to look at the very nature of thought to really see what thought does, how it likes to judge and separate and classify.

It’s not going to stop or be quiet or change; it’s doing what it’s doing. In seeing that, in the same way you see that water is wet, you don’t try and change water to be dry, which would be ridiculous. In the same way, just seeing how thought does it’s thing, finding a reference point, finding a conclusion, which it’s probably going to do forever – there’s no solution, you know.

The way that all happens has nothing to do with who you really are. Who you are is noticing those thoughts. So thought can self-monitor away, but actually, it’s never self-monitoring because who in fact is it monitoring? An idea of who I think I am, but that again is just another thought.

Yes, and there are lots of ideas about how other people see me.

The thing is, you never know how someone else sees you.

And it’s natural because that’s what thought does and it will probably go on doing that forever. In a way, you could say that it does that to fill the gap; because you don’t know, thought is trying to know.

And that’s the whole thing with the search as well. Because you don’t know who you are, thought is trying to know but the answer isn’t in trying to know.

Thought is always assuming there is a reference point, that there is someone who should be saying this or not saying that; but actually, if you check and look for that someone you would find there isn’t anyone here, there is only thought. And yet it keeps referring to someone, as if there is a self-conscious someone in there that should be doing things differently.

Exactly, but it is just the nature of thought. It has nothing to do with who you really are; it might do it forever, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t mean anything because it is not actually referring to a real person, who is self-conscious.

So do you have an idea that your experience should be better?

The biggest confusion here is that it has anything to do with experience. Somehow there is an idea that your experience should show that it is integrated; your experience should show that you have got it now in some way.

It’s good to expose these thoughts, to see them actually as they are, even if it feels embarrassing to admit it.

So the bottom line is the hope that the experience will improve.

Exactly. That’s what thought is saying; this isn’t enough, there’s something missing because if there weren’t anything missing, the experience would be much better, it would be great in some way. Perhaps that’s imagined in all kinds of ways dependent on what you have read or maybe experienced before.

Yes, I understand. Experience is the biggest misconception among every seeker; that it has something to do with an experience I am having or have had and that you need to have; that it’s all about my experience and your experience but it’s not about that at all.

And that’s the annoying thing for people actually. It’s really annoying because if it were about experience then I could tell you, if you do this, this, and this, then your experience will improve; it will be in your control and you’ll be able to make it better.

Even if you did have an amazing experience and grace did come and give it to you, eventually that experience would change to something else because that’s the nature of experience. Every experience passes.

But this is where we get confused again. OK, yes it is a non-experience but it is still an experience that passes. The experience I had while I was with Dolano passed and it was fine that it passed. Other experiences have happened and passed since then too.

Thought may have had some ideas about that afterwards – it’s gone now, how do I get it back. I also had similar thoughts like the ones you were mentioning earlier – how can I integrate it – and that went on for some time, believing that I needed to give it some kind of meaning. But actually, it’s got nothing to do with experience; that experience passed and it’s actually only about this experience, this ordinary experience, of sitting here talking with you.

It’s got nothing to do with any one experience of being more special or more valuable than any other; even the experience of recognition.

But if you get it, that experience will also pass. So it’s not about the experience, it’s about what is recognized.

That I don’t know anything, and that I have never known anything. And you already know that too.

Yes. See how ridiculous it is. Somehow you want validation.

Yes. You want someone else to say, it’s ok, but actually you’ve got to stand on your own and know for yourself that the way it is is that you don’t know. The whole search is about putting other people up on a pedestal and saying they know and I don’t know.

I did that for years. I wasn’t so much interested in various teachers but I always thought that other people were cleverer or knew more; they knew how to be a person better than I did.

But actually, the fact that I don’t know is the way it is. And the way it is for me is just the way it is. No one else can tell me it should be any different. It is just the way it is.

[Interview conducted Spring 2011]