Is inquiry necessary?

Isn’t it true that inquiry is based on the belief that it’s some­thing we need to do to gain under­stand­ing of who we are?

Who needs to gain any­thing? That’s the ques­tion. What is it we lack that years of inquiry will fill?

If we cease obey­ing the call to inquire, what remains?

See that the promise of inquiry is that we will have some mod­icum of con­trol. It’s based on the hope that if I get this, then I will be free of the bur­den of the self! What is this self that you need to be free of?

What is this strug­gle against the self? Who is strug­gling against what?

The self is not a belief. It is this.

Isn’t inquiry a con­ve­nient way to avoid liv­ing this sim­ple moment? The strug­gle with the self is that action that can­cels the oppor­tu­nity to be in grace. We real­ize that this moment has already been lived. It’s hap­pened. We seem to pro­duce all of this stress and anx­i­ety over what? Is it not self-rejection that lies at the very core of this anx­i­ety and stress?

Are you obsessed with doing the right thing?

Since no one knows what’s right or wrong, then what is the prob­lem? It’s all hap­pen­ing and no one has a clue how or why it’s hap­pen­ing. So why cease­lessly evaluate?

Take a walk and get the sense that you’re not doing any­thing — noth­ing! or … you really are doing it all. See that the line of demar­ca­tion that iden­ti­fies “your” doing from “other” doing (like what makes the sky blue) is arbi­trary. It’s the inser­tion of a learned belief based on noth­ing but fabrication.

Inquiry is an effec­tive way to sus­tain the belief in a sep­a­rate self. It tends to appeal to ana­lyt­i­cal, intel­lec­tual types, like me, but I’ve now seen it as more of a detour … maybe an essen­tial detour, but a detour nonethe­less. Can you see that as well?

If inquiry has a pur­pose, then it must be this: to inquire into the belief that one needs to inquire at all. Who is that per­son? When that iden­tity is clearly seen as some­thing unreal, merely a lin­ger­ing belief that’s hard to shake, then a very large step toward real free­dom from the search has happened.