Wheel of Suffering

Why your spiritual practice has turned into a distraction and your awareness of non-duality has become the very source of your suffering

“Shiv - thank you for your articles. I’ve been reading them for a year now and after nearly 30 years on the spiritual path I can feel the seeking energy falling away. I do have a question for you regarding your own awareness. How often are you effortlessly aware? I have had a meditation practice for several decades now (started with the Maharishi Mahesh yogi’s TM in the 80s and then vipassana and finally zazen in the last decade). Despite being an experienced meditator I often have moments of lapse where I find myself trapped in some form of separation-based thinking - especially about the future (I am in my 60s and retiring in financial comfort is a concern). You are a parent from what I can gather and you have spoken of your own financial struggles supporting your family and coping with this mad world. How do you successfully maintain your awareness of the present when there are so many demands on your attention?”

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You cannot fail at being aware.

Allow this statement to sink in for a moment. Read it as many times as you need to before continuing on. In fact, even if you were to read that one statement and chose to ignore the rest of this essay, you will not have missed out on much. What follows is merely an expansion. That one statement is the essence of everything you need to know.

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You cannot fail at being aware.

What changes - constantly - is what you are aware of. The objects of awareness - the contents of awareness - these are constantly changing. And these will constantly change. There is no need to try and control what objects appear in awareness. Not only is it futile to do so, it also further entrenches your illusion of control.

You have no control.

It is like watching a river sweep past you. Can you control what the river contains? Can you determine whether a leaf will float past, a branch, a piece of driftwood or a duck? You might try and filter out certain objects from your vision. You may become well versed at focusing only on leaves and turning a blind eye each time a piece of driftwood floats past. But what are you really achieving? All you have learned to do is suppress the acknowledgement of some of the river’s contents in favor of others. Does this sound wise to you?

Would you not prefer to see the river as it is? To watch it all - without aversion?

Awareness is like that river. Constantly flowing - never stagnant.

You have no choice but to be aware.

So, begin first by understanding that ‘being aware’ is not some skill you need to learn. It is like breathing. It is natural, involuntary and core to your existence.

The problem is that you have been taught - by spiritual literature, doctrines and teachings - that there is a “hierarchy of awareness”. Low awareness, high awareness, conditioned awareness, transcended awareness and so on. And you have also been led to believe that ‘liberation’ occurs through a slow (or sudden) shift from the lower end of this spectrum of awareness to the higher - until perhaps your awareness becomes so “locked and loaded” that it shoots right off that spectrum.

This is a misunderstanding. Let me clarify this matter for you.

There is no hierarchy in awareness. Awareness is awareness is awareness.

The only hierarchy lies in the contents of awareness. The kinds of things you can be aware of.

The awareness of a newborn, the awareness of a Yakuza crime boss, the awareness of a Zen master and your awareness…all one and the same awareness. No higher, no lower. Yet, what content that awareness orients towards via the filters of each unique body-mind-nervous system may vary significantly.

All rivers are essentially the same phenomenon of water flowing due to gravity - yet each follows a different path carved for it by the earth (and carved by it into the earth) and contains contents that can be wildly different from other rivers.

So, the sorts of things that your awareness orients towards may be slightly different than that of a Yakuza Boss’s and almost certainly different than that of a newborn’s. But that is because your own body, mind, genetic inheritance, environmental conditions, karmic propensities are entirely unique. Trying to orient your awareness to flow like that of Ramana’s is like trying to make the Nile flow like the Amazon. It is absurd.

There are no superior rivers. No better or worse ways for them to flow. Each simply flows as it does.

Awareness flows through the terrain of your body-mind-nervous system exactly as it must. Regardless of what you have been brainwashed into believing it should be doing.

Spiritual teachings over-inflate the importance of “being present” as if by doing this you are somehow achieving mastery over awareness. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Awareness couldn’t care less about where it goes. It flows in spite of you, not because of you. It contains the contents it contains. Whether you value and focus only on some of its contents and ignore the rest makes no difference. Do you think the river cares if you notice only its leaves and not its driftwood?

More importantly do you think you are impacting the river in any way by doing this? It’s a laughable prospect when you see it this way. Yet, every meditator on the planet is attempting to do this very thing.

Why? Because they have an incomplete understanding of the dynamic between awareness and its contents.

What follows next is a breakdown that will radically change the way you look at your own mind and your spiritual practice.

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THE WHEEL

There are three levels of content that awareness orients towards.

The outermost level of content is the overarching narrative of our worldview. If you could imagine the wheel of an old wooden cart - then this outermost layer is the circumference of that wheel - its ring. This includes our life story and ourselves as the main character. It has a cast of other core characters like family members, friends, coworkers - people we are familiar with and who impact us. It also includes tertiary characters - people we have never met but whom we know of - writers, musicians, politicians, filmmakers, activists and so on - who influence us positively or negatively. And finally, there is the remaining cast - the nearly 8 billion strangers as well as hundreds of billions other lifeforms we share the earth with - in this grand theatrical production we call “life”.

(When you are worried about the state of world affairs, Gaza, Ukraine, the rise of AI, runaway inflation - or you are thinking about what your retirement will look like, how you will make your finances last, the lives of your loved ones - all of this content belongs to that outermost level.)

Notice the wheel’s ring has no starting point or end point. It is continuous. Similarly, our narrative of the world feels just as seamless. We may question events that happen within it - but we rarely question the basis of the narrative itself. The wheel propels forward but the circumference looks the same whether it is stationary or moving. That is why even as time passes, our worldview appears remarkably consistent. While certain changes do occur throughout our lives, the overall trajectory of that narrative - the core themes, the patterns of relationships, the general attitude towards the world - stays mostly consistent. Every once in a while a hole appears on the ring - some belief falls away, and it is quickly patched up with another belief. Yet, the structure of the ring remains mostly uniform.

This outer ring of the wheel is what dominates most people’s attention. The story, the narrative, the overarching worldview - is our near constant preoccupation.

However, there is a second level - a more fundamental layer of content. And that is the physical circumstances of the present moment. (And when I say “present moment” - I am referring to the physical reality in your immediate field of experience - not something happening on the other side of the planet that you have no way of being aware of.)

The tea kettle whistling, the throbbing pain in your lower back, the cat yawning on the sofa, the feeling of your feet on the floor, the low hum of the air conditioner. These contents, that are immediately experienceable in the present moment, are like the spokes of the wheel. Depending upon the speed with which we move through life - these spokes may blur together or, when we slow down, may become uniquely distinguishable. The slower the wheel turns, the more easily we are able to appreciate each spoke for its own uniqueness.

Mindfulness practices are essentially the act of slowing down and becoming aware of the spokes of the present moment. Because we intuitively sense that this level of content is more fundamental than the level at which our life story operates. Without the spokes, the ring could not exist.

For most people, awareness shifts to this level of content infrequently - mostly because we are habituated to move too fast. Only in moments when we suddenly slow down - when camping in nature, or watching a sunset on a beach - is the full appreciation of the contents of the present felt. And eventually, awareness shifts right back to the narrative.

Finally, there is a core level of content even more fundamental than awareness of the present moment. And that is the awareness of our awareness.

The spokes of the wheel all meet at a central hub. That hub is core and unchanging.

More strangely - that hub is empty. It is a hole.

When we become aware of our awareness - we turn awareness into ‘content’. We make it an object. We become aware of its spaciousness, its silence, its emptiness, its no-thing-ness of it. We come to realize that without the hub - none of the rest is possible.

Without the hub…No spokes. No ring. No wheel at all.

So, there is a hierarchy to the contents of awareness (and not to awareness itself). Because each level of content acts as the foundation upon which the next level exists.

The hub is the foundation for the spokes. And the spokes are the foundation for the ring.

Now, let me illustrate the crux of the spiritual seeker’s confusion.

The seeker lives under the delusion that because there is a hierarchy to the contents of awareness - one can then develop “higher awareness” by learning to focus more on the core content.

In other words, while most lay people are distracted by the outer ring of the wheel (inner dialogue), the seeker must learn to gradually become more aware of the spokes (mindfulness) - and eventually train themselves to focus purely on the hub itself (non-dual awareness).

This is a grave misunderstanding.

It is indeed important to grasp this three-level hierarchy of the contents of our awareness - just as it is important to understand the correct structure of a wheel. However, once one has witnessed this hierarchy, it then makes no difference whatsoever where one’s awareness goes.

Does the wheel spin any differently whether you are looking at its hub or at its spokes? Do you move any further along if you are appreciating each spoke individually or are focused on the narrative of the outer ring?

If you can see the wheel for what it is - then what difference does it make at which point on the wheel you are focused?

This is the core truth that appears to be missing from pretty much all the spiritual teachings I have encountered.

Once you have seen the wheel for what it is - there is no merit in hyper focusing on any one level of content.

Whether you are a yogi sitting in a Himalayan mountain cave attempting to stay aware of your own awareness - whether you are a person going about your daily life attempting to remain present and mindful of the contents of your physical reality - or if you are just the average person wandering off into your mental narratives of your life story…

…it simply doesn’t matter.

Once you have grasped the right hierarchy, awareness can simply go where it goes and do what it does - and there is nothing that needs to be done about it.

No need to manage, control, manipulate, cajole, negotiate.

The river simply flows as it must.

The problem is that society and most human beings have an inverted understanding of the wheel’s inherent structure. They believe the ring is the core. The spokes are some weird pokey things sticking out of it that don’t really need much attention. And finally, they are mostly unconscious of the hub. Since it appears to be a hole - they think there is nothing there worth paying attention to.

And this is where spiritual practices such as meditation, mindfulness and awareness-based exercises come in. Their sole function is to reveal the right hierarchy of the content that our awareness orients to.

Yet, once that hierarchy is clear - there is simply nothing that needs to be done about it.

As a long-term meditator this hierarchy is already clear to you. You have consistently experienced how the nervous system shifts when awareness moves away from the contents of the narrative (the ring) to the contents of the present moment (the spoke). There is a sense of balance, calm, grounding and homeostasis that descends. An overarching sense that all is well.

You have also likely experienced, even if in brief patches, what happens when you become aware of your own awareness. When this occurs for a prolonged stretch, you have felt the deepening of silence, the expansion of spaciousness, the gravity of stillness within you. A crystal perception of an emptiness pregnant with infinite potential.

And you have seen that this emptiness is the hub upon which the physical reality of your present moment circumstances are constructed. And further, you have witnessed how the physical reality of every moment is the spoke upon which the abstract reality of your life-story - the ring of the wheel, rests.

Then, what more are you struggling to achieve?

Why are you punishing yourself by attempting to manipulate your attention to focus on the spokes of the present moment instead of the ring?

Why do you feel it is so important to concentrate solely on the hub of your awareness?

Why do you call the ring of your life-story a “falsehood” and unworthy of your attention?

If you can see the wheel for what it is - then why are you so adamant on fixating on a single part of it?

Of what use is a disconnected hub? What utility can a bunch of spokes without a ring to attach to serve? And what can you do with a ring if there are no spokes or hub to connect with?

Do you not see that all are vital to the functioning of this wheel?

And further…

Do you realize - you are not that wheel?

You are neither the outer ring, nor the spokes, nor even the empty hub.

ALL of these are merely the contents of awareness - not awareness itself.

And while the emptiness of the hub more closely reflects your own emptiness - the difference is that the hub’s emptiness is confined to the wheel. The diameter of its hole is fixed.

But you…

You are not confined to the wheel. Because you are not part of it.

Wherever you wander. Whether you find yourself running on the ring, standing on a spoke or seated within the hub - it matters not.

Because you are eternally free to move.

That is why you can experience the wheel in all its aspects - the ring, the spoke and the hub - because you are not any of them.

You are unrestricted by the hierarchy of the contents.

Then, why do you believe you need to restrict yourself?

Do you see the misunderstanding you have been functioning under?

Ultimately, you must come to the acceptance that you will never see what you are. You will never know what you are.

Because you simply cannot turn yourself into an object.

All you can see is your own reflection - in the various forms of content that occupy awareness - the spiritual, the physical and the mental - the emptiness, the presence and the narrative - the hub, the spokes and the wheel.

For all these reflections, from the core to the outer, reveal something of your own nature to you. But they are not you.

Emptiness is your nature. Presence is your nature. Joy, boredom, fear, love, hatred, anxiety, fantasy, escape, courage, compassion - are also aspects of your nature.

But you are not any of them.

Yet, the moment you fixate on any level of content and call it more “real” than another - you identify with it. And in that identification, you lose yourself.

So, when you fixate on your life-story … you become identified with the ‘person’ you are.

When you fixate on the present moment … you become identified with the ‘feeling’ of being here and now.

When you fixate on your own awareness … you become identified with the ‘perception’ of empty spaciousness within.

And while each level of identification feels qualitatively distinct from the other - each causes its own kind of suffering.

For those who identify with awareness become “stuck in emptiness”, losing vitality and zest for the ordinary moment.

Those who become fanatical about mindfulness of the present moment, lose their ability to function practically and prudently in the affairs of the world.

And finally, those who become identified with the narrative of their lives (as is the most common case) suffer the futility of endlessly seeking solutions to their suffering.

Any part of the wheel you identify with - whether the ring, the spokes or even the hub - causes its own brand of suffering.

That is why it is called the Wheel of Suffering.

And while ‘getting off’ the wheel is the aspiration of every spiritual seeker…

The inside joke is - there is no way to get off it.

Because you were never on it in the first place.

The more freely awareness moves and the less you try and interfere with it or show preference to one level of content over another - the more you will find that you are not any of the objects you were trying to focus on (or avoid focusing on).

If you are lost in thought about your future finances - enjoy being lost in thought.

If you are present to the sound of the tea kettle whistling on the stove - enjoy the whistle.

If you are witnessing your own awareness and the sense of stillness and expansion that accompanies it - enjoy the stillness and expansion.

But know that the thoughts, the whistle of the tea kettle, the stillness and expansion - is all just shit that happens.

It is all content.

It’s not important - in any absolute sense.

And that is precisely why you can enjoy it. Because it’s not important.

It’s all just play.

The dance of forms.

The creative act of content unfolding across every level - the spiritual, the physical and the mental.

The wheel of samsara turns endlessly. But you were never on it.

Enjoy watching it turn.

Watch how the hub rotates, how the spokes blur, how the ring moves forward seamlessly.

But if you fixate too much on any one part, the wheel begins to hypnotize.

You begin to imagine yourself somewhere on that wheel - stuck.

The existential anxiety, the panic, the exhaustion sets in.

You begin attempting to find some way to get off…

Snap out of it!

And remember what I said right at the beginning…

You cannot fail at being aware.