You Aren’t Experiencing Reality
You’re experiencing what you’ve already said about it.
You aren’t experiencing reality.
You’re experiencing what you’ve already said about it.
And this happens so quickly, so automatically, that it feels like the same thing - but it isn’t.
Before you even finish reading this sentence, your mind will name something. It will label, interpret, place it into a category it already understands. It might be subtle. It might feel harmless. But in that moment, that almost invisible reflex, is exactly where reality begins to disappear.
There is a moment before the mind speaks.
Before the word “bird.”
Before “sound.”
Before “beautiful.”
Before “annoying.”
Before “mine.”
Before all of that -
there is just this.
Not as an idea. Not as a state. Not as something you enter or achieve.
Just this.
In Buddhism, this is sometimes called Tathatā - suchness. But even that word is already too much. It isn’t pointing to something special or elevated. It isn’t a mystical layer hidden behind reality. It isn’t something reserved for monks or meditators or people who have spent years trying to get somewhere else.
It’s what remains when nothing is added.
And that’s the part that’s difficult to see - not because it’s hidden, but because it’s so immediate, so ordinary, so completely obvious that the mind keeps moving past it in search of something more.
The problem isn’t reality.
The problem isn’t what’s happening.
The problem is what’s being said about it.
A sound appears.
Immediately, the mind moves: it names it,
interprets it,
relates it to you,
decides whether it’s good or bad,
decides how you feel about it.
All of this happens in less than a second.
And just like that, you’re no longer hearing.
You’re thinking.
Suchness isn’t mystical.
It isn’t silence.
It isn’t bliss.
It isn’t transcendence.
It isn’t even what people call “pure awareness.”
That’s already too late.
Because the moment you say “awareness,” there is already a split - something that is aware, and something it is aware of. The division has already happened. The mind has already entered.
Suchness is prior to that.
Before naming.
Before division.
Before “you” show up as the one experiencing anything.
A monk once asked, “What is the truth?”
The master replied, “The cypress tree in the courtyard.”
Not a metaphor, nor poetry.
This is not something to decode.
Just - what’s there.
Direct. Immediate. Uninterpreted.
At some point, many seekers arrive at a certain clarity. There’s a recognition: “I am not my thoughts. I am the one aware of them.” And this can feel like a breakthrough. It feels spacious, free, untouched.
But look closely.
Now there is awareness - and what is known.
Still two.
Refined, subtler, harder to detect, but there is still a division.
Suchness is not awareness of reality.
It is reality before it is split into observer and observed.
The Buddha pointed to this directly in the Bāhiya Sutta:
“In the seen, there is only the seen.
In the heard, only the heard.”
Not you hearing something.
Not awareness noticing sound.
Just hearing.
No center.
No owner.
No commentary.
The simplicity of this can feel almost underwhelming, and that’s precisely why it’s missed. Nothing is being added. Nothing is being improved. Nothing is being framed in a way the mind can hold onto.
And the mind doesn’t like that.
It wants meaning.
It wants structure.
It wants identity.
It wants a position to stand in, something to say, something to know.
Suchness gives it none.
So the mind does what it always does, it turns even this into something to pursue.
You might notice yourself trying to “stay in suchness,” trying to hold onto that raw, unfiltered immediacy. But the moment that happens, it becomes a state. A practice. Something to maintain.
Which means the self is back - quietly managing the experience, claiming it, trying to stabilize it.
And we’re back in the same movement again.
So what is suchness, really?
Not something you experience.
Not something you understand.
Not something you can point to, define, or hold.
A simpler way to say it:
Before you and the world.
Before observer and observed.
Before experience and experiencer.
There is -
this.
And even that is already too much.
Because the moment it’s said, it’s been shaped.
You don’t enter suchness.
You stop leaving it.
Seeker:
What is suchness?
Sage:
Before you answer -
what is here
that needs
a name?
🕉️🪬🙏🏽🫂🙏🏽🪬🕉️