There is a story about Buddhanandi, the eighth Indian ancestor, and his meeting with Punyamitra.
When Buddhanandi met him, he said:
“You are more akin to mind than to your parents, incomparably more akin.”
It is a strange statement.
We normally think of our parents as being among the closest people to us. They gave us our bodies, our history, our name. Much of what we think of as ourselves seems to begin there.
And yet Buddhanandi points somewhere even closer.
Before our name, before our history, before everything we have learned about ourselves, there is already this capacity to experience.
Seeing.
Hearing.
Feeling.
Knowing.
We spend most of our lives absorbed in the content of experience: thoughts, emotions, memories, plans, worries, desires.
The content changes constantly.
One thought appears and disappears. Another takes its place. A feeling arises, stays for a while, and changes. Something happens and immediately the mind begins telling a story about it.
Most of the time, this is where our attention goes.
I sometimes notice this when I am cycling.
I can become completely absorbed in the numbers on the bike computer: speed, distance, heart rate, power.
Meanwhile, there is a road beneath me.
There are trees.
There is the sky.
There is the sound of the tyres.
There is an entire world happening, and I am staring at a number on a small screen.
Practice can sometimes be like this too.
We become fascinated by the content.
Is my meditation good?
Am I calm enough?
Why am I thinking so much?
Am I making progress?
We watch the numbers on the screen and forget the road.
But Buddhanandi’s statement invites us to look somewhere else.
Not at what we are experiencing, but at the simple fact that experience is known.
Right now there may be a sound.
What is aware of this sound?
There may be a thought.
What is aware of this thought?
There is the breath.
What is aware of this breath?
Not looking for an answer in words.
Just noticing.
This is very close to the old Zen question:
What was your original face before your parents were born?
Obviously, it is not asking us to imagine a face existing somewhere before our birth.
It turns the attention back towards something more immediate than our biography.
Before the story of who I am.
Before the opinions.
Before the roles.
Before all the things I have accumulated and learned to call me.
What is here?
This does not mean that thoughts, feelings or stories are wrong.
They are part of experience.
The problem begins when we become so absorbed in them that we forget everything else.
Like staring at the bike computer while the countryside passes unnoticed.
So perhaps practice does not always require adding something.
Sometimes it is simply noticing what is already happening.
A sound.
A breath.
A thought.
And the knowing of it.
Buddhanandi tells Punyamitra:
“You are more akin to mind than to your parents, incomparably more akin.”
We do not necessarily need to understand that sentence.
We can sit with it.
And perhaps, for a moment, stop looking at the numbers on the screen and look at the road.
