We live our lives pursuing happiness "out there"

as if it is a commodity.

We have become slaves to our own desires and craving.

Happiness isn't something that can be pursued

or purchased like a cheap suit.

This is Maya,

illusion,

the endless play of form.

In the Buddhist tradition,

Samsara, or the endless cycle of suffering

is perpetuated by the craving of pleasure

and aversion to pain.

Freud referred to this as the "pleasure principle."

Everything we do is an attempt to create pleasure,

to gain something that we want,

or to push away something that is undesirable that we don't want.

Even a simple organism like the paramecium does this.

It is called response to stimulus.

Unlike a paramecium, humans have more choice.

We are free to think, and that is the heart of the problem.

It is the thinking about what we want that has gotten out of control.

The dilemma of modern society is that we seek to understand the world,

not in terms of archaic inner consciousness,

but by quantifying and qualifying what we perceive

to be the external world by using scientific means and thought.

Thinking has only led to more thinking and more questions.

We seek to know the innermost forces which create the world

and guide its course.

But we conceive of this essence as outside of ourselves,

not as a living thing, intrinsic to our own nature.

It was the famous psychiatrist Carl Jung who said,

"one who looks outside dreams, one who looks inside awakes."

It is not wrong to desire to be awake, to be happy.

What is wrong is to look for happiness outside

when it can only be found inside.

On August 4th, 2010 at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, California,

Eric Schmidt-CEO of Google, mentioned an astounding statistic.

Every two days now we create as much information

as we did from the dawn of civilization up until 2003,

according to Schmidt.

That's something like 5 exabytes of data.

Never in human history has there been so much thinking

and never has there been so much turmoil on the planet.

Could it be that every time we think of a solution to one problem,

we create two more problems?

What good is all this thinking

if it doesn't lead to greater happiness?

Are we happier?

More equanimous?

More joyful as a result of all this thinking?

Or does it isolate us,

disconnect us from a deeper and more meaningful

experience of life?

Thinking, acting and doing,

must be brought into balance with being.

After all, we are human beings, not human doings.

We want change and we want stability at the same time.

Our hearts have become disconnected from the spiral of life,

the law of change,

as our thinking minds drive us towards stability,

security and pacification of the senses.

With a morbid facination we watch killings, tsunamis,

earthquakes and wars.

We constantly try to occupy our mind, fill it with information.

TV shows streaming from every conceivable device.

Games and puzzles.

Text messaging.

And every possible trivial thing.

We let ourselves become mesmerized with

the endless stream of new images, new information,

new ways to tantalize and pacify the senses.

At times of quiet inner reflection our hearts may tell us

that there is more to life than our present reality,

that we live in a world of hungry ghosts.

Endlessly craving and never satisfied.

We have created a maelstrom of data

flying around the planet to facilitate more thinking,

more ideas about how to fix the world,

to fix the problems that only exist because the mind has created them.

Thinking has created the whole big mess we're in right now.

We wage wars against diseases, enemies and problems.

The paradox is that whatever you resist persists.

The more you resist something, the stronger it gets.

Like exercising a muscle, you are actually strengthening

the very thing you want to rid yourself of.

So then, what is the alternative to thinking?

What other mechanism can humans use to exist on this planet?

While Western culture in recent centuries has focused on exploring

the physical by using thought and analysis,

other ancient cultures have developed equally sophisticated

technologies for exploring inner space.

It is the loss of our connection to our inner worlds

that has created imbalance on our planet.

The ancient tenant "know thyself" has been replaced

by a desire to experience the outer world of form.

Answering the question "who am I?" is not simply a matter

of describing what is on your business card.

In Buddhism, you are not the content of your consciousness.

You are not merely a collection of thoughts or ideas

because behind the thoughts is the one who is witnessing the thoughts.

The imperative "know thyself" is a Zen koan, an unanswerable riddle.

Eventually the mind will become exhausted in trying to find an answer.

Like a dog chasing its tail, it is only the ego identity

that wants to find an answer, a purpose.

The truth of who you are does not need an answer

because all questions are created by the egoic mind.

You are not your mind.

The truth lies not in more answers, but in less questions.

As Joseph Campbell said,

"I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life,

as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive."

When the Buddha was asked, "what are you?" he said simply,

"I am awake."

What does this mean, to be awake?

The Buddha does not say exactly, because of the flowering of

each individual life is different.

But he does say one thing; it is the end of suffering.

Every major religious tradition has a name

for the state of being awake.

Heaven,

Nirvana,

or Moksha.

A quiet mind is all you need to realize the nature of the stream

All else will happen once your mind is quiet.

In that stillness, inner energies wake up

and work without effort on your part.

As the Taoists say, "Chi follows consciousness."

By being still one begins to hear the wisdom

of the plants and animals.

The quiet whispers in dreams,

and one learns the subtle mechanism by which

those dreams come into material form.

In the Tao te Ching, this kind of living is called "wei wu wei"

- "Doing, not doing."

The Buddha spoke of the "middle way" as the path

that leads to enlightenment.

Aristotle described the Golden Mean - the middle

between two extremes, as the path of beauty.

Not too much effort, but not too little either.

Yin and yang in perfect balance.

Vedanta's notion of Maya or illusion,

is that we do not experience the environment itself,

but rather a projection of it created by thoughts.

Of course your thoughts let you experience the vibratory world

in a certain way, but our inner equanimity need not be contingent

on external happenings.

The belief in an external world independent of the perceiving subject

is fundamental to science.

But our senses only give us indirect information.

Our notions about this mind-made physical world

are always filtered through the senses and therefore always incomplete.

There is one field of vibration underlying all of the senses.

People with a condition called "synesthesia" sometimes experience

this vibratory field in different ways.

Synesthetes can see sounds as colors or shapes or associate

qualities of one sense with another.

Synesthesia refers to a synthesis or intermingling of the senses.

The chakras and the senses are like a prism

filtering a continuum of vibration.

All things in the universe are vibrating

but at different rates and frequencies.

The Eye of Horus is made up of six symbols,

each representing one of the senses.

Like the ancient Vedic system,

thought is considered to be a sense.

Thoughts are received simultaneously

as sensations are experienced on the body.

They arise from the same vibratory source.

Thinking is simply a tool.

One of six senses.

But we have elevated it to such a high status

that we identify ourselves with out thoughts.

The fact that we do not identify thinking as one of the six senses

is very significant.

We are so immersed in thought that trying to explain thought as a sense

is like telling a fish about water.

Water, what water?

In the Upanishads it is said:

Not that which the eye can see, but that whereby the eye can see.

Know that to be Brahma the eternal and not what people here adore.

Not that which the ear can hear, but that whereby the ear can hear.

Know that to be Brahma the eternal and not what people here adore.

Not that which speech can illuminate, but that by which speech can be illuminated.

Know that to be Brahma the eternal and not what people here adore.

Not that which the mind can think, but that whereby the mind can think.

Know that to be Brahma the eternal and not what people here adore.

In the last decade, great advances have taken place

in the area of brain research.

Scientists have discovered neuroplasticity - a term

which conveys the idea that the physical wiring of the brain

changes according to the thoughts moving through it.

As Canadian psychologist Donald Hebb put it,

"neurons that fire together, wire together."

Neurons wire together most when a person is in a state of sustained attention.

What this means is that it is possible to direct your own

subjective experience of reality.

Literally, if your thoughts are ones of fear, worry, anxiety

and negativity then you grow the wiring for more of those thoughts to flourish.

If you direct your thoughts to be ones of love,

compassion, gratitude and joy,

you create the wiring for repeating those experiences.

But how do we do that if we are surrounded by violence and suffering?

Isn't this some kind of delusion or wishful thinking?

Neuroplasticity isn't the same as the new age notion

that you create your reality by positive thinking.

It is actually the same thing that the Buddha taught

2500 years ago.

Vipassana Meditation or insight meditation

could be described as self-directed neuroplasticity.

You accept your reality exactly as it is - as it ACTUALLY is.

But you experience it at the root level of sensation,

at the vibratory or energetic level without the prejudice or

influence of thought.

Through sustained attention at the root level of consciousness,

the wiring for an entirely different perception of reality is created.

We have got it backwards most of the time.

We constantly let ideas about the outer world shape our neural networks,

but our inner equanimity need not be contingent on external happenings.

Circumstances don't matter.

Only my state of consciousness matters.

Meditation in Sanskrit means to be free of measurement.

Free of all comparison.

To be free of all becoming.

You are not trying to become something else.

You are okay with what is.

The way to rise above the suffering of the physical realm

is to totally embrace it.

To say yes to it.

So it becomes something within you,

rather than you being something within it.

How does one live in such a way that consciousness

is no longer in conflict with its content?

How does one empty the heart of petty ambitions?

There must be a total revolution in consciousness.

A radical shift in orientation from the outer world to the inner.

It is not a revolution brought about by will or effort alone.