The Eye Cannot See the Eye

The eye cannot see the eye... because the eye is what seeing comes through. In the same way, Awareness cannot observe itself as an object. It is the Openness through which experience flows.

Thoughts, thinking, and narratives appear within the field of Awareness like clouds, birds, or flashes of lightning in the sky. They come and go without direct invitation. But they never tear the sky. They occur to the ‘Observer,’ but aren’t the observer itself. Attention... the lens of Awareness... notices them.

This noticing could tell us everything that we need to know: If a thought can be observed, it cannot be the one doing the observing. If we’re looking in a mirror, do we say what’s reflected in the mirror is the mirror? There’s some-thing that’s doing the noticing. What does that ‘some-thing’ sense like?

Here’s where a lot of us can get confused and tangled up. We grow up talking about thoughts as “mine,” “me,” “I,” as if the activity of mind as us. I once heard someone describe this activity as ‘selfing.’ But this is a case of mistaken identity. We confuse the “avatar” or “representative self” with who and what we actually are.

The road is not the traveler riding on the road. The one holding the cup of tea, isn’t the tea itself. A story is no more our identity than a movie actor temporarily playing a role for a specific movie. They only create the ‘appearance’ and ‘seemingness’ of something solid, while pointing toward something deeper.

In Zen practice, we dissolve this confusion... not by fighting thoughts, not analyzing them, not entertaining them... but by resting in undivided 360° attention. We sit as the ZEROLESS ZERO, allowing thoughts to flow through without grabbing. We don’t follow the projections. We see them for what they are: objects appearing to Awareness, not Awareness Itself.

When this becomes clear, even for a second, there can be a glimpse of Original Stillness... boundless, open, and complete. It’s not that space returns… it’s that Attention ceases to collapse around every passing thought. The chatter loses its appeal. And Reality, as it is, quietly reveals itself.

一 We Are the Practice Itself

As a sidebar: Would it be possible that what we call 'my' anxiety, 'my' insecurity, 'my' worry, 'my' frustration, 'my' anger, 'my' fear, even 'my' plans… is actually an involuntary activity of the mind... a reflection it can use as a kind of point on a map it recognizes as "self." But when we rest in conscious contact with Awareness itself, these 'hallucinations' aka fantasies lose their energy? And in their absence, we may recognize something truer than any thought can describe. Neti neti… not this, not that… One-pointed undivided Awareness.