Attributes and actions such as greed, jealously, the need to impress, the sacrifice of one’s autonomy and spiritual independence, anger, hatred, and fear are all characteristics of the thirst for power. These tools are put into operation by those with power who wish to hold on to or usurp “control” from those who are meeker and lower in the social system (politically, monetarily, aesthetically, etc.) who offer up or have taken away from them, their power, autonomy, and confidence, consciously or unconsciously, to those with the power. These roles of power wielder and power giver are not necessarily static; essentially, I doubt that any individual consistently falls into one of these categories. For example, in one situation one may be more aesthetically appealing than the other, the later then feels inferior to the former. Though perhaps the later does happen to be more intelligent, then in cases involving intelligence he would not lack power and usurps the power from he who holds it aesthetically. This perhaps shows that there are in fact several differing kinds of power and power exchanges, though this is something that I will not presently investigate further.

Given that these exchanges, as far as I have examined, deal primarily, and perhaps solely with power based on ego, on holding up the importance of the self, I will assert that this exchange, though apparent and real, is ultimately a façade, an unnecessary and harmful socially constructed paradigm of which we, as a conscious and global society, must dissolve. I see inferiority being the prime motivator in both those cases (having/giving power). He or she who has it wishes and fights to contain and control it as it gives them a sense of happiness, fulfillment, and importance. Without the power, they have lost these qualities. Ironically, these are the most fleeting, transitory ways of gaining happiness. Those that offer power up feel that they are undeserving of it, that they are inferior to those requesting it, therefore acquiescing to the power holder’s greedy wish.

The neurotic sense of this is that nearly everyone is in one sense or another blind to this occurrence, though, simultaneously, brazenly believe that he or she with the most power is the best and happiest human. My assertion is that this power is fleeting, it is based upon attributes that are quickly and ultimately taken away. The person who dies with the most power is not in fact the happiest, but the most dissatisfied. As in life, the symbols of true happiness are not fought for out of power, but through awareness and understanding. Mystics of every culture, chronological point, and background strongly declare that this life is here to gain consciousness, to be aware of beingness, to understand the beauty of being alive, to understand and feel what it means to be in the universe, that, in actuality, we are the universe. Power and its struggles, to put in Buddhist terms, are maya, implements of illusion used by the demon Mara to keep humanity drowning in their sea of sorrow and despair. We no longer need to succumb to this lie.

Our minds are conditioned societally and egoically to exist in a constant state of discomfort, of yearning: states of dissatisfaction and seeming incompleteness. When separated from time, the mind lashes out, feeling anxious and as though it should be doing something, it must be forgetting something important. The ego wants us to always be existing in time, to always be doing something it deems of import, so that we can have some false sense of self-grandiosity which will trick us into thinking, for a time, that we are somehow better than others and that we have somehow “made it”. Often when we give our selves a moment to relax, our mind still has this sense that it should be doing something else, and when we don’t, we feel guilty. According to the mind, it’s never okay to simply be.

Humanity is the only creature on the planet that exists in a constant state of striving and rushing to get things that don’t essentially matter to our survival. We rush and rush, strive and strive and still we are dissatisfied. We exist in a constant trance of busyness. It is never enough that we have our basic needs of food, clothing, and shelter met, because there is something else we must find that will make us happy. And once we find that thing, then we must find something else. We would be much better off if we accepted the invitation to stop this. To bask in our being and to appreciate, for once, life as it is without our frenetic sense of searching, yearning, and wanting. We really can exist without those. In fact, once we do, we open up to a whole other level of being that is not encumbered by persistent dissatisfaction: peace, stillness, and silence.

I have been trying to encapsulate into words my interpretation on the nature of reality. This of course, is ultimately beyond words and form and this is not completely meshed out, but this is the explanation I have so far.

At the very essence of everything exists what I will call the ultimate ground of being. It is that which many religions and philosophies have called “God”. Some teachers have also called it presence, beingness, isness, and so forth. From the ground of being, arises consciousness, which is created so that the ground of being can know and experience itself through the multiplicity of the totality of reality. Consciousness is awareness, knowing, that which can observe that we are thinking. It can be still or active and it exists in everything that is created. These are the Absolute levels of being, the levels from which all else comes into existence, the levels at which everything is unified. From consciousness, we then have mind. In its essential state, mind is made of pure consciousness and it is also part of the Absolute.

On the Relative level of reality, which comes forth from the Absolute level, but is ephemeral, and transitory, we have forms, bodies, the namarupa (the realm of name and form). Things that come into and out of being. It is here where Mind meets the secondary level of reality and joins a body. Mind will often become exceedingly preoccupied with the namarupa, the secondary level of reality and forget its ultimate nature. It begins to become sucked into the dream of reality which is created by the mind. The mind identifies first with its personal thoughts, believing them to be ultimately real and abiding. Then it ascribes the same qualities to the body. Identifying with it, creating an ego, sets of beliefs, giving form to emotions, societal indoctrinations, societal dreams, and societal egos.

A rampant situation in our world is that of ceasing to see another human being as an equal, as a fellow human  focusing on their differences rather than our similarities. In so doing, we see them as “other”. In our reality, we turn this person into an enemy. They practice a different religion, eat different food, see the world in a different way, so they are not the same as us. They are less than us, thereby undeserving of our utmost love, attention, and compassion. Sometimes this occurs nearby, in our neighborhoods and towns. We have enmity towards the Jewish neighbor because he doesn’t celebrate Christmas or the Muslim woman in the apartment next door is somehow inferior because she wears a hijab and refrains from eating pork. Often, this hate is directed outside our borders, far away, to those we haven’t even met. Our knowledge of them is second hand, fed to us by our media. We are told to hate them because our worlds are far too different for there to ever be accord. Because of this, we go to war. We kill, innocents and warriors alike. Civilizations are destroyed under the guise of protection and freedom, so that ultimately avaricious corporations can increase their wealth. Sometimes it becomes so intense and difficult to deal with that watching the news brings us sorrow and tears to our hearts. Reading the newspaper makes us want to check out of the current social paradigm, to go somewhere untouched by this discord.

How and where can we repair this erroneous mindset in which we see others as others, making them enemies instead of friends? How can we see the Muslims across the ocean as  fellow humans equally worthy of love and respect as we are ourselves? How can we not laugh at and judge Hindus because they treat the cow as a sacred object? We can begin by stopping this practice of othering?

We can stop seeing our differences and recognize that we are all intrinsically interconnected. We all need each other to exist in this world. We need to recognize our inherent humanity, we need to recognize that we are all desiring of freedom from hurt, pain, and fear. We are all human. We all breathe. We all bleed. And we all have the capacity for love and greatness. We are all doing the best we can in the situations we are in with the mental, spiritual, and material capcities we have available to us at the time. Let’s bring this propensity of ours to see the differences between one anothter to the light of consciousness so that we can examine its falseness and see the damage it causes to our societies and planet. Let’s replace this ugly tendency with our inherent gifts of adoration and trust so that we may see the beauty and power within ourselves and the rest of the world. 

To discover your limitations is the same as to discover your limitlessness. To discover your shadow is the same as to discover your light. To discover your humanness is to discover your Buddhaness. To discover you’re finite is to discover you’re infinite. — Anam Thubten

When we honestly ask ourselves the question Who am I? — and stay with it long enough to hear the answer — what arises is usually a litany of stories. Stories installed by family, culture, religion, accumulated experience. Stories about what we are capable of, what we deserve, where we belong, and what is possible for us. Many of these stories are limiting. Many perpetuate a fundamental sense of separation that is, at its root, a fiction.

If we could see — even for a moment — that the true nature of everything, including ourselves, is and always has been pristine, luminous, and immeasurable, the grip of these stories would begin to loosen. What we can always return to, beneath all of it, is simple beingness. Everything else arises within that.

Meditation is one of the primary tools for this investigation. In Buddhist teaching there are two foundational forms. The first is śamatha — calm abiding — in which attention is placed on the breath, allowing the mind to gradually settle into stillness. The second is vipaśyanā — insight meditation — which turns that settled attention toward inquiry: into the nature of thoughts, beliefs, and the structures we have taken to be ourselves and the world. What is actually true here? What have I assumed to be permanent that is, on closer inspection, entirely ephemeral?

These are not comfortable questions. Most of us have built considerable architecture around not asking them — walls and fences constructed from the very beliefs we have never examined. And those unexamined beliefs drag us through life on an exhausting circuit: grasping at what we think will bring happiness, fleeing what brings discomfort, watching each arrival dissolve into the next source of dissatisfaction.

But here is what the inquiry eventually reveals: the distinction between happiness and discomfort, at the ultimate level, is a construction of mind. When we open fully to both — not as problems to be solved but as facets of being to be met — something shifts. The egoic framework that was constantly measuring, evaluating, and finding reality wanting begins to quiet. And in that quieting, what becomes visible is what was always already there: wholeness that was never actually absent.

The question Who am I? is not asked in order to find a better answer. It is asked in order to see through the machinery of answering altogether.