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from practice and lull us back to sleep, and find a wayto steer our minds directly to the luminous clarity of ouroriginal awakened state.The entire corpus of complex practices taught inthe traditional schools of Taoist and Buddhist cultivationboils down to a single simple teaching that can besummarized in three words : “Be here now.” This is thekeystone that supports the entire foundation of all thepractices. This precept has become such a popular “NewAge” slogan that it’s usually dismissed as a trite cliché,but it nevertheless remains the essential link connectingall the major Eastern practice lineages, and it holds thekey that unlocks the gate to success in them all. Let’s takea closer look at this supreme yet simple teaching, wordby word, and see how itworks.“To Be or Not toBe…”That’s the basicquestion in the questfor enlightened awareness:to be aware or notto be aware. It’s also thechoice one makes whenchoosing to follow theTaoist and Dzogchenpaths of practice, whichare designed to awakenthe practicioner to a directexperience of beingpresent in the primordialstate of awareness. This is a state of being that canonly be experienced when you stop doing. That meanswithdrawing the energies of body, breath, and mindfrom their ordinary expressions of “doing” in activity,speech, and thought, and resting instead in the stillnessand silence of simply “being.” In Taoist tradition, thedeliberate withdrawal of energy from the active state ofdoing into the still state of being in order to experiencethe nature of awareness is called wu wei (“not doing”).In Buddhism, this basic meditation practice is knownas shamatha (“dwelling in tranquility”). Disdained inmodern life as a waste of time, “sitting still doing nothing,”which is the Chinese term for “meditation,” is infact an indispensable condition for all spiritual discovery.Meditation is your ticket for a front-row seat in the theaterof complete reality, where the curtain doesn’t rise untilyou sit still and be quiet.Life in the world today spurs us into a constantgallop of non-stop activity and traps our attention witha relentless onslaught of sensory distractions, allowingus little chance to slow down, stop moving, stop talking,stop thinking, and simply savor the essential flavor of beingalive, being aware, and being present in the moment.“Being” involves a totally different state of mind than“doing.” It’s a totally different expression of energy thatWhen you stop doingand just be, your energyremains at rest in itsoriginal potential state.reveals a completely different dimension of experience.Doing manifests our energy in a dynamic state of activity—action,speech, and thought—hooking our attentionin the temporal dimension of linear time and space. Doingalways has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and activityalways manifests in a finite field of space and time.When you stop doing and just be, your energy remainsat rest in its original potential state, permiting your attentionto experience the still depths of your mind in itsbasic state of awareness. Energy at rest abides in a stateof infinite potential, and stillness is the boundless crucibleof all creation. This is the immortal dimension of pureawareness, the primordial source from which all temporalform and activity arise and to which they all return, likewaves rising and falling onthe ocean. If the mind is likean ocean, then awareness islike the water: always calmand quiet deep down inside,but constantly rippling withwaves of activity on the surface.In order to experiencethe nature of the ocean’swater before it forms itselfinto waves, you must sinkdown below the surfaceand submerge yourself inits depths.All forms of doing—activity,speech, and thought—give rise to movement, andall movement creates theillusion of linear time, witha beginning, middle, and end. Not doing (wu wei) makestime collapse in the infinite stillness and radiant space ofbeing in primordial awareness, which has no beginning,middle, or end. When you stop moving, speaking, andthinking, time stops and awareness expands into infinity,dissolving all dualistic boundries between self andother, here and there, now and then. What you realize inthis still and silent state of awareness is that everythingarises from and returns to its original source—the empty,luminous, infinite potential energy of the primordial state.Here’s how Lao-tze expressed it in the Tao Teh Ching:Something formless yet completeThat existedbefore heaven and earth,Without sound, without substance,Dependenton nothing, unchangingAll pervading,unfailing. . .It’s true name I do not know :“Tao” isthe nickname I give it.The nickname the Buddha gave it is “Dharmadatu:”“the way things are.”“To be or not to be” is therefore the first choiceyou make when embarking on the path of cultivatingawareness. There is nothing particular to do to reach theprimordial state of enlightened awareness, because you’realready there before you start. However, it takes a lot ofpractice stop interfering with it and simply let it be. Youmust arrive at the realization that it’s already here within40 Summer 2011