Paradox Of The Seek & Sought
This which is seeking
is that which is sought,
and that which is sought,
is this which is seeking.
This poetic phrase, well-composed by Wei Wu Wei nicely sums up the expression of a spiritual endeavour, of which many spiritual seekers hunger for yet constantly elude them.
In the whole phrase, two areas stand out that needs elucidation; "That which"/"this which" and "seeking"/"sought". "This which" is pointing to the so-called seeker who keeps the flame of incessant seeking burning but never once halts and wakes up to itself. Even if it ever stops, it still tries to seek out who or what this seeker is. This addictive seeking, of wanting to get "something" out of everything, is preventing the very simplest Reality from being seen in the here and now; something which every spiritual seeker is longing for.
So, "that which" (which is the "seeker" itself), which now becomes the object of attention, is the only Reality that needs to be sought or understood. Yet, to seek for this seeker, a kind of seeking is required. This leads to a catch-22 scenario where the very seeking itself is the cause of not being able to realize the simplest Reality.
Thus, in the last two lines of the poetic phrase lie the paradox of "that which is sought is this which is seeking". It is a hair-pulling feat in trying to describe what the spiritual journey truly entails since the seeker and the sought are not separable to begin with. Prior to realizing this, the seeker tries in vain to seek what is impossible to seek. He or she just needs to stop seeking; but that does not mean halting the entire spiritual pursuit altogether. To halt is to end the possibility of realizing it. Not halting only distances one from realizing what is pristinely already here-now.
The pursuit of either doing or not doing gets us nowhere close to spirituality. What if spirituality is neither about doing nor not doing, but merely a state of non-doing where both "doing" or "not doing" are finally seen for what they are without needing to do anything further with them as they take place on their own accord, only to be seen for the last time. It is in this, both the "this which" that is "seeking" and "that which" that is "sought" is finally put to rest. And it is this realisation that brought forth another understanding that the so-called spiritual journey is nothing at all spiritual. Neither is it something mystical or Godly but merely an undoing of seeking and seeker where both these equations were but just an error. In brief, meditation is merely a mystery solving.
In grace,
Tuck Loon
on behalf of The WISE Team
Newsletter 24 November 2020