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By Root 367 0

of, the facets of our personality we are rewarded or admired for. What about the less praiseworthy aspects of our being, our less savory emotional habits? Losing our temper over a minor hassle. Endlessly procrastinating. Pushing ahead in traffic without regard for the feelings and needs of others. Waffling back and forth with fearful, worried indecision. Covering over our moments of insecurity by faking it, blustering our way through any conflict or challenge, afraid to show our true feelings to anyone. Part of the power of genuine spiritual practice is that we sit in meditation with ourselves during all the seasons of our life, during the falls and winters of trouble and defeat no less than the springtimes and summers of victory and celebration.

This is the royal road to enlightenment, approaching meditation as a process of making friends with oneself. This is the path of meditation as loving-kindness practice—we begin by first extending gentleness and kindness to ourselves.

This noticing, this wakeful, caring interest in our present state of mind and body, is itself natural. Appreciative inquiry expresses our true nature. We all have an inborn, native sense of care for ourselves. Attention expresses respect. Awareness of our own state of being is the basis of self-respect. Awakening starts with appreciating this natural interest and then gradually expanding the appetite for self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is the vanguard of wisdom. We begin with this innate appetite for knowing, and we return to it again and again, going with the grain of our own deepest inclination. We want to go beyond the illusions of sleepwalking to wake up to ourselves as we truly are, so we inquire: what am I sensing, feeling, thinking now? This basic level of self-awareness and self-reflection is readily available to all of us. Self-knowledge is the essential ground for the entire spiritual path.

WHAT IS NATURAL WAKEFULNESS?

The term “natural wakefulness” echoes similar phrases from the Buddhist tradition: original nature, fundamental wisdom, basic goodness. Are these different words for the same thing? Perhaps. What’s more important than the menu is actually tasting the meal. We live in a time in which we doubt the fundamental trustworthiness of our experience. This has become so pervasive that we wonder if it isn’t just as natural to be selfish and distracted as it is to be open and kind. To clarify this essential point, let’s return to the relationship between natural wakefulness and meditating.

Our original nature is the single most important element on the path of waking up. Why? Because it is the essential ingredient—without the natural impulse to wake up, there cannot be a path of meditation or a spiritual journey at all. Practicing meditation without this original wisdom-nature would be like gardening all summer without any seeds—we could prepare the ground and water the soil, even pick away the weeds and insects, but without seeds, we know that nothing will grow.

Similarly, no movement along the path is possible without this primary motive force. It would be like setting out to travel across town but not walking, running, biking, driving, or using any other means of transportation. How could we possibly move without motivation? True nature is our motive force.

Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche urged us to study the sayings of an ancient Indian Buddhist wisdom teacher named Tilopa. Tilopa—whose name means “sesame-seed person”—used the analogy of sesame seeds to point to the importance of our fundamental nature. Without the seeds we cannot obtain the inner essence, the sesame oil, the fruit of the meditative path. Even if we dutifully press sand or gravel for hours upon hours all day, every day, for a month, we won’t find any sesame oil. This simple analogy illuminates a profound truth: the spiritual path is not just a matter of effort and forceful will. Success on the path—what’s sometimes called “realization”—is never the product of sheer exertion, of trying and trying to get there. “Realization” means realizing what is always already here