I love this quotation from Franz Kafka – it really speaks to me about how easy it is to do something in meditation, to try to fabricate experience. It speaks so well of how I can let go of a sense of effort, of a sense of goal, or even of something to evaluate the meditation by, and how underneath that letting go there’s often something else which I’m clinging to which in turn can be let go of.
You do not need to leave your room.
Remain sitting at the table and listen.
Do not even listen, simply wait.
Do not even wait, be still and solitary.
The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice.
It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
Franz Kafka (1883-1924)
The path to effortless meditation is often for me a shedding of onion layers. I see something clearly once my mind relaxes and rests in a seeing, and then I’m in a position to simply let go. Not a ‘doing’ let go – just a ‘letting go’ which happens of itself.
Only then can I hope to see a more subtle clinging, or a more subtle fabrication.
I can’t just drop it all at once, I find. And that too is part of the letting go.
Kafta describes beautifully the reorientation away from needing experiences ‘out there’ – the constant search for stimulation and meaning and resolution ‘in the world’, towards contemplation, towards knowing the nature of all that arises in experience. Instead of being transfixed by the seemingly dazzling variety of solid experiences, we find a dreamlike nature to experience itself, and of ourselves. And then, strangely enough, a fascination arises at this utter emptiness, yet play of appearances.
And Kafka’s punchline here? That the nature of things will reveal itself, all of itself – it has no choice. Let go and be. Let go and allow experience to unfold. Let go and know.
You don’t have to strive after a goal, of enlightenment, of freedom from suffering, as it will come to you on its own, effortlessly. Trust in that, and let go.
