I am both the moon and not the moon. Deep in the contemplation of meditation, we realize this truth at once. We are both every puzzle piece that makes up this shimmering roller coaster of a world, and we are also distinct from it.

1. I am the moon

A friend and I were talking recently when he said something that struck me. “The price energy pays for identity is being divorced from the source.” What my friend was talking about is that we are the individualized nature of is-ness. The grandness of this life–a phrase I seem to continually return to no matter my circumstances–always exists here and now. Everything that you see is made of the same things–atoms and star powder.

The joy of life comes from figuring out a way to see through the individual forms of everything in order to comprehend that everything has a throughline that is deeper than color, shape, or form. I am the moon in the literal sense because I am made of the same things that the moon is made of–that’s hardly a revolutionary idea. But I am also the moon because we both are dots on the throughline that is the Möbius strip of being. There is something in this universe that never dies, is never born, and never changes. I am the moon because I am this thing as much as the tender bluebell quivering in the summer evening light.

The beauty that I see in the world–a sunset that yawns with quiet brilliance, a flower picked at the height of splendor, an ocean wave that tumbles into itself at dawn–is also me. If we believe that everything is made of the same stuff and we find other things beautiful, we are also that sunset, that flower, that wave. The beauty doesn’t stop when we are suddenly the center of attention–we are the sunset because there is nothing other than the matter that makes up the physical properties of the sunset. We have to be the sunset.

I am the moon because the moon and I get the joke. We all have the ability to get the joke. The world is in a self-referential absurdist comedy, and we are both the audience and the script. The beauty that we look for–pine for–is already here and now. If you have the ability to take in a sunset or watch the gentle arc of a ball as two people toss it back and forth post-picnic, then you have the ability to find the tenderness and wonder in your own surroundings, right now.

I am the moon, but you are the moon too.

The beauty of the moon doesn’t stop with the moon–you are the same matter as the moon. You may not control the tides, but it doesn’t matter if you do, because you are the tides too. The symphony plays itself.

What a wonder it is to be the moon, to walk in stardust, wander the world. We are searching for ourselves–that is, not looking to find ourselves, but searching to find something we already have and think we lack. If we stopped searching for what it is we want, we’d realize that we already have it. If we already possess the gorgeous, shimmering hum of the world, then there is no need to search because everywhere you are, there is that gorgeous hum of the world. The right hand cannot find the right hand because it is what it is looking for–and when we search outside of ourselves, we can only look harder for the same result: nothing.

What are you? You are the moon in disguise.

2. I am not the moon

I am not the moon. This is actually a cheap way of getting you to understand that what I say about the moon is not the moon. I can point to the moon every day, ask you to describe the moon, ask you to love the moon, tell you that the moon is right there, but if you never see it, you never know for sure.

Meditation is deeply experiential. Somehow, it’s both shockingly personal and uniformly universal. It will get you to this place of seeing the beauty of the world in a way that you might not comprehend yet.

“I am not the moon” means I can point to the moon, but I can’t give the moon to you. The beauty, the richness of living in every moment, soaking in details like we are the rum cake of experience, is possible. It’s all right here. But I can only tell you that everything you want is all right here.

The life that we live is one of joy and beauty. I can tell you this over and over, but if you never find enlightenment in the space between your thoughts, you won’t know if I’m telling the truth or not.

There is a saying in Buddhism: “A finger pointing at the moon is not the moon.” When I tell you that the moon is right here, that the beauty of life lies in every moment, don’t mistake that for me having the answer for your specific journey. As Buddha said, “We ourselves must walk the path.” I can show you the way to seeing the moon, but if you intellectually understand my words without experience, you will mistake my finger for the moon.

I do not have enough fingers to adequately point at the moon. I do not have enough words to adequately express the simple joy of waking up on this earth, grateful and loving. Without experience to paint on the canvas, you will be blind to the colors of life. I don’t say this to lock you out of some “grand experience” that I am having, but instead to push you, nudge you into going deeper into meditation and discovery of “the moon.” Everything in your world has the chance to wake you up. Meditation will lead you there.

The moon, the dirt, the Seven Eleven in a back alleyway–they all have this ineffable beauty, a beauty that can only be explained obliquely. I can’t tell you what I see, because the joy of what I see lies beyond language. That can be frustrating for someone who doesn’t understand, but believe me: if I could accurately explain things to you in a way that could give you the experience immediately, I would. Why else do I write about meditation every week, failing to inch closer to a description of what is beyond language?

I can’t show you the moon without having you experience the moon, but I can tell you about what seeing the moon is like for me. Recently, I went walking next to a wheat field. I stopped and watched the breeze flush through the stalks of grain. I crouched down so the wheat was at eye level, and I began to do shikantaza; I began to stare at a single point in space and comprehend the movement of each individual stalk of grain. As I did this, I noticed a breeze rippling its way toward me from the center of the field. As the breeze reached the edge of the field, it moved the stalks that were nearest to me.

And then the funniest thing happened.

I felt the wind keep going. It moved through me. I felt no wind, but I felt the wind move through me like I was a stalk of wheat. It felt like the most natural thing in the world: merging with a field of grass. The wind spoke to me in a language beyond words, a profound transmission that touched me deeply. This kind of moment can happen in your daily life–as it happened to me on the outskirts of a sprawling wheat field.

Can I explain what the wheat field said to me? I can try. In essence, the wheat field said one thing to me: “joy.” The simplicity of the message felt like a revelation. I felt as if I had left my body and, just for a moment, become the wind. And wandering through the world as the wind, I had a deepened sense of joy–a simplicity that comes with completely being without doing, and without noticing that you are being. There was no me–there was just the wind. I was gone.

Imagine speaking to the clouds, or a sunset. The things it would say to you would comfort you like nothing else. And it did. It was as if the wind said “It’s okay” and “This is joy” and “It’s all here” and “We are one” and “I understand you” and “This is forever” and “Remember this moment for what it is and not what it gave you” all at once. This kind of experience is possible for you, too–a profound conversation with the very through-line of which we are plot points.

Do I want to return to that moment of the wind? Do I want to keep it, to hold it, to go back to it and experience it over and over again? I don’t. Why? Because I already have it in my daily life, in my daily moments. The elation of the world is all around us in the traffic and the bluebells, the Dumpster and the gap-toothed smile. It’s all right here, right now. And if we are to find this for ourselves–this deep, unending peace that never dies, that lies beyond all the binaries our minds construct–then we must walk the path ourselves.

Trust in the process. In the beginning of my meditation journey, I was always asking myself if I had experienced the profundity that others talked about. That was a meaningless goal. I always had it, but I had to forget I had it so I could rediscover it–really rediscover it. Comparison is the meditation-killer. We don’t need to compare our journey to someone else’s. The journey is perfect as it is. Release yourself to it and you will get to your “goal” faster. But beware, because the more progress you make toward your goal, the less you will want the goal. And that is the goal in itself.

We chase goals to try to get something that we don’t have. But with meditation, we have what we need right here and right now. It’s all a loving embrace that captures you, enraptures you, ensconces you, and never lets you go from its everlasting embrace. The more that we can get in contact with this feeling in our daily lives, the more life unfolds before us as a perfect experiment. It is a quietly brilliant letter that takes a lifetime to read.

Reading these words, you might want this experience for yourself. You might want to experience the profound joy in the world around us, every day, always. But the more you want this experience, the more it escapes you. If you want it, you don’t have it. If you don’t have it, you look for it. If you look for it, you miss it. Because it’s right here.

Nothing pleases me more than to know I have this experience for life. I have this experience for as long as I breathe, and I could not be more split open with gratitude for the life that life has given me. This kind of gratitude wells up inside me when I see a bird twaddle down a sidewalk looking for rogue seeds and crumbs; when the giant skyscrapers reflected in my irises make me marvel at the wonder of human persistence; when the entire world seems to gently pause every night for sunset, for the light show that is given to us freely without asking anything in return.

What have we done to deserve this? We are the messy creatures that destroy and maim and want and take–and yet there is an everlasting presence among us that allows us all the grace that we don’t deserve. Many of us don’t even realize that we have this grace, that we have this gentle love that weaves itself throughout every event, every word, every thought of our lives. This is the beauty of the experiment we are in, and if you want to take part in the grand gratitude of seeing this presence as what it is, then meditation will lead you there. It’s a pathway to seeing the unseen.

With this presence by your side, you don’t need vacations or fancy cars or elaborate dinners or unlimited sexual gratification. Everything that you could ever want lies in the moment you are in right now, and this is a profound gift. This can never be taken away from you. You will always have this gift.

This gift exists in the favelas of Rio and on the rocky shores of Scotland. It exists on the arid plains of South Sudan and in the lush jungles of Bangladesh. With a simple practice of paying attention to your breath, you will find that you are already in the lush jungle of Bangladesh, the arid plains of South Sudan, the labyrinth of favelas in Rio. That feeling is already here, the thrill of the ordinary, the rush of the mundane. What are we but what we experience right now? If you can deepen this experience, you can touch the wind in the wheat field. You can stay with it and live in a space of pure beauty and awe, where there is no need for anything other than to just be. It’s an ecstatic state, and one that you can always exist in.

My conversation with the wind spoke to me because it showed me the path that I am on is a path of conversations beyond language. And if you can have these conversations with the trees, the moon, the stars, the sunsets, then you too will realize the splendor of what we’ve been given right now. It’s a calm that settles over everything, a softening until what is left is just the pureness of being.

The morning sun throws light on the kitchen floor. The rain clouds hurl water at your window. This world is an extraordinary one, and with a little bit of paying attention to your breath, you can see this too.

Don’t give up. Keep on this path because it will hold you in a gentleness you’ve never known. And gratitude will be a natural result.

I am not the moon, but I am the moon.