Relax.

Listen to the beat of the drum.

There’s no-one here!

Tom Das

This pithy statement actually encapsulates the entire teaching. How? Let me explain:

Relax…

This refers to generating peace, and relaxation primarily of the mind. Like a dense fog clearing in the heat of the morning sun, allowing the mind to calm and thoughts to lessen gives rise to the conditions in which clarity of seeing-understanding can arise.

As we practice being peaceful, we naturally become happier: a warmth in our heart naturally blossoms as our addictive pleasure-seeking desires weaken and fade. We learn to be happy where we are, and then we pass beyond the need for the body-mind to even be happy or at peace. Gradually compulsive desires fall away and we no longer suffer if we do not receive what we want. Our compulsive desires fade, and only preferences remain.

Listen…

This refers to the insight part of the teaching, the essence of the teaching. It is clear seeing-understanding. As the morning fog clears, things can be seen for what they are, as they are, brightly illuminated by the sun of knowledge/insight/understanding.

…to the beat of the drum.

What do we listen to? What are we looking at? The drum can represent the body-mind entity, an object in the world, or just a simple drum. The point is to see things as they are. As the drum beats, we can watch it, hear it, follow its mechanism.

We can see how there is nobody inside the drum making a noise. We can see how the sound is an automatic  reflexive response when the skin is struck with the striking implement. We can see how the drum is empty, and the resonance within the empty space (full of air) creates the reverberating sound.

We can see how this is true of all things, how all things act and function without there being a separate doer-entity that initiates and creates its actions. Rather there is a natural spontaneously self-expressing interdependence and non-separation.

There’s no-one here!

Like the drum, we are essentially empty, meaning there is no trace whatsoever of a separate individual doer/self. This is the essential realisation of freedom.

It is not that the appearance of the body-mind goes or changes, or that you lose the experiential perspective of being a particular body-mind. No. Perception from the apparent perspective of the body-mind remains.

The term ‘no-one’ refers specifically to no-doer. It is the seeing that there never was a separate doer-entity. It is seeing that this doer was created by thought, it was imagined by thought and believed to exist by thought.

A summary

Through generating peace (Relax…) the grip of thought was loosened, through observing (Listen…) things were examined with the intention of seeing things (…the drum…) as they are. Comparing what is seen against the content of our thoughts, it is revealed that the concept of doership does not accurately reflect the reality of what is perceived: there is no doer.

The concept of doership has been operating for so long within most of us. It is this concept that causes our suffering. The understanding that there is no-doer can then act to root out the concept of doership and remove suffering.

What we are left with is what was always here: this. It doesn’t have to be named, you don’t have to put it in words, you don’t have to carve it up using the knife of concepts (although you can if you want). It’s just whatever’s happening, spontaneously arising, however it arises.

This.