Be aware of what is going on in your head, like it was clouds in the sky, or the crackling of the fire. There is no problem to this.

All you have to do, really, is look and listen without naming. And if you are naming, nevermind. Now, you can’t force anything here; that you can’t willfully stop thinking and stop naming.

It’s only telling you that the separate you doesn’t exist. It isn’t a mark of defeat, it isn’t a sign of your lack of practice in meditation.

That it runs on all by itself simply means that the individual, separate you is a figment of your imagination. So you are aware at this point of a happening.

Remember, you don’t know anything about the difference between you and it; you haven’t been told that.

You’ve no words for the difference between inside and outside, between here and there, and nobody has taught you that what you see out in front of you is either near or far from your eyes.

Watch a baby put out a finger to touch the Moon. You don’t know about that. Just – therefore – here it is. We’ll just call it ‘this’.

And if you will feel it – the going on, which includes absolutely everything you feel – well, whatever that is, it’s what the Chinese call Dao, or what the Buddhists call ‘Suchness,’ or tathātā. And it’s a happening.

It doesn’t happen to you, because where is that? You – what you call you – is part of the happening and it’s a little scary because you feel, ‘Who’s in control around here? Why should there be anyone?’

It’s a very weird notion we have that processes require something outside them to control them. It never occurred to us that processes could be self-controlling. Even though we say to someone, ‘Control yourself!’

We always, in order to think about self-control, we split a person in two. So that there is a you separate from the self that’s supposed to be controlled. Well, how can that achieve anything? How can a noun start a verb? Yet, it’s a fundamental superstition that that can be done.

So you have this process which is quite spontaneous going on, we call it life – it’s controlling itself! It’s aware of itself. It’s aware of itself through you. You are an aperture through which the Universe looks at itself. And because it’s the Universe looking at itself through you, there’s always an aspect of itself that it can’t see.

So it’s just like that snake, you see, that is pursuing its own tail. Because the snake can’t see its head like you can’t. We always find as we investigate the Universe, make the microscope bigger and bigger and we will find ever more minute things.

Make the telescope bigger and bigger and bigger and the Universe expands because it’s running away from itself. It won’t do that if you don’t chase it.