The state of meditation is, we could say, where we are ‘Present in the moment, for no reason, without intending to be’. This is a delightfully simple and uncontrived (necessarily uncontrived) situation, therefore – it’s not complicated (or sophisticated) at all. There couldn’t actually be a simpler (or ‘less contrived’) state of affairs – this is simplicity itself. It’s so simple that we can’t actually say anything about it. It’s so simple we can’t grasp it – we can’t communicate any information about it, we can’t tell anyone about it.

When mindfulness first burst onto the scene in the way that it did at the beginning of this century, we would often hear it said that ‘mindfulness isn’t for everybody’ – which might be seen as a kind of ‘pushback’ against its popularity and the formidable weight of scientific evidence showing its benefits that come from practicing it. No one likes to have something pushed upon them, after all. The question therefore arises – how can < Being present in the moment for no reason at all, without intending to > be ‘not for everybody’!

What we’re talking about here is simply ‘being alive’ (or ‘being conscious’); cats – for example – are in this spontaneous state of being all the time (without making an issue of it). Cats – along with most other animals – aren’t neurotic in the way that we are, they aren’t constantly caught up in meaningless games in their heads, suffering because of things that aren’t actually real. If they are (and dogs are more prone to neuroticism then cats are) it is undoubtedly because they’ve spent too much time hanging around us human beings.

We human beings don’t know how to be simple; generally speaking, it isn’t something that has much appeal to us – we don’t see any benefit in being simple! We could be taken advantage of if we were too simple, that’s what happens in this world if we’re not tricky enough, after all. To be simple is to be vulnerable, it is have to have no defences against the world, and this – understandably – doesn’t sound too good to us. Logic says we should protect ourselves, logic says we should enter into the arms race like everyone else…

We come into this world vulnerable, without any defences coming without any shields, without any ‘trickiness’, but by the time we reach adulthood this has all changed. It is very rare indeed to reach adulthood with this vulnerability or guilelessness still intact. The world scars us (or – to be more accurate – our attempts to protect ourselves from the world scars us and renders us insensitive). Even if we seem to have done a good job in protecting and safeguarding ourselves via our heavy-duty personality armour and cunning strategies, our very success works against us since when we lose our vulnerability we lose our connection with the world around us (and if we lose our connection with the worlds than we lose who we are).

There are two things that cause us to be ‘tricky’ (if we may continue to use that word): [1] is the ‘need’ to protect ourselves from the dangers of the world (maybe we grow sharp teeth or maybe we develop a hard protective shell) and the other is the ‘need’ (again, in inverted commas) to avail of whatever benefits are out there (before someone else avails of it first, leaving us with nothing). Either we’re <avoiding the bad stuff> or we’re <securing the good stuff>, in other words. Whether it’s the one thing or the other, it’s the same thing however – it’s all trickery. In the words of Taoist scholar and translator Thomas Cleary –

When birds are at their wits end, they peck; when beasts are at their wits e they gore, and when humans are at their wits end, they resort to trickery.

In adult life, trickiness or sneakiness becomes a key survival trait, therefore. Our success in this super-competitive world, super goal-orientated world of ours depends on how good we are at ‘playing the game’ – we aspire to be what James Carse calls Master Players, unfailingly obtaining the outcome we want, never bested by other players, never taken unawares by circumstances. Being highly skilled in ‘playing the game’ – as we have said – is considered by one and all to be the most admirable and desirable trait of all We all want to be Master Players, untouchable in the exercise of our will. We want to be winners, envied by all.

From the point of view of the societal game that we are all playing (as best we can), this ability or skill is – when it comes down to it – the only thing that matters. Nothing else counts, anything else is merely camouflage. Society’s sharks wear masks! The Social Game needs lots and lots of dedicated players if it is to continue; it isn’t any good for us as individuals however and if it isn’t any good for us as individuals then this means that it isn’t really any good at all! ‘The individual is the sole carrier of value’ says Jung. Who cares about ‘the well-being of states’, or ‘the well-being of institutions’, ‘the well-being of organisations’, and so one? Social groups (both big and small) derive their ‘well-being’ at the detriment of the individual; their ‘health’ – we might say – is our affliction.

Because life – for us – is seen as a finite game (which is to say, because our culture is based upon the idolisation of personal will, the idolisation of ego) it is only to be expected that we will seek to optimise our game-playing abilities at the expense of everything else. This is what’s going to bring home the bacon, after all. To be wholly identified with the rational-purposeful mind in this way – so that ‘jostling for the advantage’ is all that we know – isn’t good news for us however, it’s not good news because the result of this commitment, the result of this ‘one-sidedness’ (as Jung calls it is) that we are completely unable to be in the present moment.

By overvaluing the rational-purposeful mind in the way that we do (by idolising ego-fulfilment in the way that we have) we have guaranteed never actually being present in our own lives, and this – needless to say – turns out to be rather a big deal! It’s not something we ought to overlook. The present moment is the only place that there is actually any reality, after all – anywhere else is merely fantasy and – as Robert Burton says – ‘A life lived in imagination is a life not lived”. In the terms that we ourselves like to use, there couldn’t be a bigger failure than this: by banking so heavily on trickiness, we’ve tricked ourselves out of life itself. By getting so very smart – so smart that we can no longer know how to stop being smart – we have outsmarted ourselves. [“If you could give up tricks and cleverness, that would be the cleverest trick!” – Rumi]

When we’re addicted to playing the Finite Game (as we absolutely are addicted) then all that matters to us (by definition) is getting things to happen the way we want them to. All that matters to us is ‘obtaining our goals’ – the only thing we know how to do is to control or manipulate! The problem with this – as we started off by saying – is that the one thing we can never do by design, as a result of exercising personal will, is to be present in the moment. That’s not a trick – if ‘being present’ is to happen at all, it must happen naturally, must happen by itself. “Being present, without intending to, for no reason” is the simplest, and most natural, thing there is; it is also the thing that is most impossible for us…





Image credit – ‘Midjourney Prompt: Anansi the Spider steals wisdom’. Taken from medium.com/@gioparks808/5