Sonam Hoani

I first received these instructions deep in the context of studying Vajrayana Buddhism. My fellow practitioners had been meditating for years. Due to the English language level of my teacher, to be honest, it wasn’t a lot clearer.

When we say “look,” we don’t really mean to behold in your visual perception. Like it’s not something you isolate and identify in your visual field, so that’s very confusing.

It’s more like sense, or feel for the looker.

By “the looker,” which is somehow never elaborated upon, we mean the sensation of an enduring self from moment to moment.

What we’re beginning to get at here is the core concept of Spiritual Enlightenment, right? That there is a higher, or true self beyond who we normally take ourselves to be.

So who do we normally take ourselves to be? We usually feel like there is an author in addition to our perceptions. So a real, substantial someone that is perceiving the sensations in our life. Like there is a looker in addition to looking, a hearer in addition to hearing, a thinker in addition to thinking and so on. We presume the ‘subject-object divide,’ is not only a way of thinking about the world, but fatally, also how we experience the world.

What we can recognise in meditation, and this instruction is just ONE of many techniques to get us there, it’s that when our mind is more calm or more present there is no divide. I mean how could there really be right? The context is always awareness. 

When we feel like there is a self, this is just because we haven’t recognised how caught up in thinking we actually are, or “we have no idea where we are.” More accessibly, it might also simply be because we’ve never reflected before on this content about who we truly are on this utmost intimate level.

So the goal isn’t actually to find “the looker,” because as I’m explaining here – there isn’t one. Rather, the instruction is to feel into that sense of who we conventionally take ourselves to be. This dualistic notion of self and other, which is reified by all the constructs of our conventional lives. It’s to feel into that sense or become curious about it, until we can recognise that who we usually take ourselves to be, is not a lasting sensation. 

It’s just another impermanent sensation appearing in the wider context of non-dual awareness.

So you might start by just contemplating everything I’ve said here. What’s the difference between an idea of something, and the first-hand experience of something? What’s the difference between all your usual ideas about your work/life, and experiencing your work/life first-hand? What’s the difference between thinking that you’re listening, and hearing just the raw sensation of a sound?

Now we’re in a much less conceptual frame of mind to approach meditation and this, “look for the one who is looking instruction.” Well, are you hiding behind your computer monitor? Are you sitting over in that chair, in the room? Are you, your most principle you, in your left hand?

After a lot of meditation practice with a calm and concentrated mind it is possible for you to sit down and see that all you’re ever doing when you sit down to meditate, is either thinking without knowing it or, recognising the evanescent face of your awareness.

With great care it is possible to un-train distraction, and align more and more to your original awareness.

I have other videos about alternative techniques. All meditations instructions are to the same end, but this is an analytical instruction. Analytical instructions work because there is something significant to notice, but the second part is that what’s noticed is also pristinely effortless. The other branch of mediation instructions are really resting instructions. 

Where’s your strongest sense of self? Locate it, notice it, and relax. Release it a little. Watch it for a little while and then maybe, even if just for a moment you will notice it your not exactly where you thought you were, and that’s a chink in the armour.