The Way of Wat Ching

What is Wat Ching? A Tai
wanese marshal art? A recently discovered sacred text? A meditation technique? A secret cult? Actually, it’s just my little joke. And a reminder. Wat Ching is a mischievous mystification of the word “watching.” It is a reminder that all methods, writings and sects are merely fingers pointing at the moon, not the moon itself. The witnessing of the whole enchilada being cooked up before our eyes right now and now and now...that’s the moon. It’s all about deep watching. The Silent Witness. Seeing as the essence of being.

All the words, concepts, and pearls of wisdom gleaned from all the sages of antiquity are about as precise as a screeching pack of monkeys when it comes to articulating the cognitive transformation produced naturally by one’s own moment-to-moment attention to one’s inner and outer worlds. Sooner or later we’ve got to put down the books and just watch what’s happening without judgement, without preconception, with every fiber of our being.

God is in the details. And the details of your life -- down to the silliest craving for pralines and cream or the most absurd hissy fit directed at that road hog SOB poking along in front of you -- are more important than the greatest architechural achievements, the latest Olympic records, or the most glorious battle ever fought for king and country.

Dig your life! Not the one that's built of happy abstractions. No, dig the one that’s right in front of you — that post-modern take on a Monet interior, rising up from behind your iBook screen, that world where a Norwegian Forest Cat is sprawled out on the butcher block table staring out a glass door at a black-and-white Tabby lolling in a garden tableau on a spring day by the bay. It’s all there. The colors and the flavors, the bright afternoon light and the cool marine breezes, the freeway noise, and the dainty white butterfly flickering through the roses..

Every abstraction pales by comparison to a totally committed emersion in the minutia of your own existence. So go for it. Go for an emersion that is so complete that duality itself washes off you like so much road dust. So complete that there is no experiencer experiencing the experienced. There is only the whirling, swirling dance of Seeing-and-Being …being its own big, beautiful Self.

Consciousness itself is the ultimate reality, if your unconscious self only knew it. It can know it, if it will allow itself to learn from its Self. It can become free… from Samsara, from the veil of notions… largely by watching those notions come and go, noting their effect without getting involved, and skirting the slip knots and tape loops that trail behind those notions, trying to catch us unawares,

Seeing (with all our senses) is simple and arduous at the same time. Deep seeing requires a quality of attention so complete that great passion and commitment and energy are needed. It’s not only attention to the outer world, it’s attention to the thought formations that steal our attention away from the bigger picture and drown us in endless stories, melodramas, and scenarios. Including stories like “This is my quest, to follow that star, no matter how hopeless…", to one day be (fill in blank) Rich? Famous? Enlightened?

We need to watch these processes diligently, not so we can learn something and become better people but because the watching itself fosters the state of grace that nurtures wisdom. When you attend intently, you are getting in touch with a powerful essence. The heart blood of the Cosmos — the curious and sensuous eye of the All — consciousness itself. Complete that circuit as often as possible and your confusion will be vaporized merely by the electrical exchange that is a standard feature of cognizance. Feel the mysterious power of the Wat Ching!