Simple

(From the Archive of writings from 2009-2011)

Life can seem very complicated. There seems to be so much going on, so many things interacting with each other, so many different possibilities to be taken into account. Yet in another way it is also incredibly simple. 

The only time that ever demands a response is the present moment. And that response is already happening. How could it not be? Even if that response is a resistance to what is happening (for example some sort of reaction against what is written here), it is already happening, right now. Even if the response is an apparent numbness or disinterest or indecisiveness, that too is what is happening right now. And even if the response involves thoughts of planning something in the future, or remembering something in the past, that is also happening right now. Thoughts, sensations, behaviours and emotions all seem to arise in response to whatever else is appearing in the present moment and are part of it. 

Life is already responding to itself. Actually, even to say there is a response, or a present moment, is an unnecessary embellishment. Life is, already. Sounds, sights, thoughts, feelings, movements etc are all just happening. Simpleness unfolding through apparent complication. In the seeing that it is just as it is, all the apparent activity of life is doing itself. It is impossible to really separate any part out and say ‘this is me’, or ‘mine’, or ‘I am responsible for this’.  

So even if life seems to be complicated, there is no-one separate who can do anything about it. In which case, who cares? There might be a thought of complicatedness and someone who needs to do something about it, and then that thought might disappear and there is still only the simplicity in which that thought, and everything else, appears and disappears.