' The child and the bug '...

A child looks at a bug with total curiosity. He isn’t thinking about the bug. He has never seen a bug before. He has never learned the word “bug.” He can’t call it an “arachnid” or some other classification either. He hasn’t learned those words. He simply looks deeply at this strange and wonderful creature. No thought comes to the looking. There is only the looking. In that looking, there is no child. The idea “I am a child looking at a bug” doesn’t even arise. It’s a story, totally irrelevant to the looking. The story is a second hand account of something too intimate for words.

In that looking, before thought labels the experience and files it away as ‘something known,’ there is an immediate presence that simply sees. This presence is not at all conceptual. It is the unknown. There is no word for it. Even the word “presence” is a story seen by this looking. It is what allows the bug to be seen. It is what allows the word “child” to be seen. It is what allows everything to be seen and to just be.

In realizing that this essence that is looking is what you really are, all suffering ends. Presence simply looks with innocence and intimacy. Concepts still arise. But you now know exactly what you are. No story will ever suffice again. This presence is your true identity.



-Kiloby, Scott. Reflections of the One Life: Daily Pointers to Enlightenment