Awakening: Wake Up, You Are Already Here
In a dictionary sense, ‘ awakening ’ means the act of starting to feel or understand something. It is when the penny drops and we begin to comprehend that life isn’t what it seems. To know who we truly are, we must confront the deeper reality hidden behind our personality’s façade. Mandukya Upanishad describes four states of being: jagrat, waking state; swapna, dream state; sushupti, deep sleep; and turiya, the state that pervades all others. Turiya is a state of awakening; it involves complete dissolution of observer and observed duality, allowing an individual to rest in Satchitananda.
This understanding isn’t restricted to the Vedantic paradigm; it appears in myriad ways across cultures and traditions that may never have met yet understood nuances underlying existence. The title of one of the world’s oldest teachers, Buddha, simply means ‘the awakened one.’ In many cultures, temples house murtis of the reclining Buddha, as if he were in deep sleep. The reclining statues symbolise liberation, parinirvana, and awakening. In Buddhist parlance, this means cessation of attachment that causes suffering. Across traditions, a similar image appears: ordinary life as a kind of sleep, and the spiritual path as the long, gentle process of opening the eyes. Early Christians sang of it, urging sleepers to rise from the dead and let light fall on them. Upanishads speak of the Self that watches the waking, dreaming and deep-sleeping mind and is none of them. Zen masters rang bells and struck tables to say one thing: wake up, you are already here.
Great Encounters SUN Peng, AwakeningA painting can depict what an experience feels like. Awakening presents it as a vision of an encounter: a colossal head, serene and smiling, rests under a sky crowded with stars and comets. On its shoulder, a small company of luminous figures, one crowned with a sun, seems to keep a quiet vigil. Below, in a pool of golden light, a single pilgrim with a pack on his back stands looking up. The pilgrim simply watches the giant, unafraid. He has come face to face with a deeper reality beyond his comprehension, yet he remains a silent witness, absorbing the scene as it unfolds. He is much like a seeker who eventually finds the inner truth and is held in its thrall.
Salvador Dalí, SleepThe journey to awakening faces many hurdles, and one of the biggest is ego. It is like a king who won’t let go of his throne. Salvador Dalí’s painting Sleep depicts a vast, drooping head held up by thin crutches. It is a portrait of ego at rest: heavy with its own dreaming, steadied by supports it cannot see. Our names, roles, fears and stories are crutches. Spiritual masters have always said that most of us live inside such a dream with our eyes open, moving through the day on autopilot and never quite being in the present.
The vast, quiet space behind the head contains ancient towns, a distant figure and an open sky. Wide spaces suggest unexplored facets of one’s own subconscious mind that must be examined impartially. In The Transcendence of the Ego, Jean-Paul Sartre said that the ego is a thing of the world. It is external, out there, and easily influenced by externalities. Surmounting it requires an inner gaze and the development of a quality of witnessing.
Eye In The SkyRené Magritte, The False Mirror (1929)
Magritte depicts an eye that is turned inward. The painting portrays an eye that holds a vast expanse of blue sky. At its centre sits a black circle, the pupil: an emptiness through which everything is received. The one who watches is not different from the open space in which the sky appears or from the emptiness of the pupil. Buddhism points to the empty, luminous nature of mind. German priest Meister Eckhart said, “The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.” When seeker is centred, thoughts pass like clouds adrift, and she is not troubled by the colour of clouds or by the weather they bring.
The butterfly and the dissolving self
Zhuangzi dreaming of butterfly, ink paintingTaoist sage Zhuangzi dreamed he was a butterfly, happy and unaware of being anyone else. On waking, he could not say whether he was a man who had dreamt of a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming of a man. The old ink painting lets sleeper’s robes merge with the background, while the butterfly floats, weightless.
This is transcendence of the self. When self stops being a fixed thing, it loses the weight it carries and can assume different forms. Zhuangzi’s dream points to the constant transformation of things, and to freedom of one who is no longer in ego’s grip. True wisdom comes from mastering oneself and letting go of rigid viewpoints.
Life can be viewed from different perspectives. Why should the human-centric view be the final verdict on what is real and what isn’t? In Buddhist view, there is no permanent self. If self can change, what is the point in clinging to it? The spiritual life, in this view, is not about becoming someone better; it is about holding every identity lightly enough to let it change, as a butterfly leaves its chrysalis without regret.
No master can do the waking for you, and no painting can either. But the great images do what the great teachers do: they point. Sit quietly for a moment, and notice who is looking. That noticing is the awakening, and it can happen now
Compiled by Sonal Srivastava
This understanding isn’t restricted to the Vedantic paradigm; it appears in myriad ways across cultures and traditions that may never have met yet understood nuances underlying existence. The title of one of the world’s oldest teachers, Buddha, simply means ‘the awakened one.’ In many cultures, temples house murtis of the reclining Buddha, as if he were in deep sleep. The reclining statues symbolise liberation, parinirvana, and awakening. In Buddhist parlance, this means cessation of attachment that causes suffering. Across traditions, a similar image appears: ordinary life as a kind of sleep, and the spiritual path as the long, gentle process of opening the eyes. Early Christians sang of it, urging sleepers to rise from the dead and let light fall on them. Upanishads speak of the Self that watches the waking, dreaming and deep-sleeping mind and is none of them. Zen masters rang bells and struck tables to say one thing: wake up, you are already here.
Great Encounters SUN Peng, AwakeningA painting can depict what an experience feels like. Awakening presents it as a vision of an encounter: a colossal head, serene and smiling, rests under a sky crowded with stars and comets. On its shoulder, a small company of luminous figures, one crowned with a sun, seems to keep a quiet vigil. Below, in a pool of golden light, a single pilgrim with a pack on his back stands looking up. The pilgrim simply watches the giant, unafraid. He has come face to face with a deeper reality beyond his comprehension, yet he remains a silent witness, absorbing the scene as it unfolds. He is much like a seeker who eventually finds the inner truth and is held in its thrall.
Salvador Dalí, SleepThe journey to awakening faces many hurdles, and one of the biggest is ego. It is like a king who won’t let go of his throne. Salvador Dalí’s painting Sleep depicts a vast, drooping head held up by thin crutches. It is a portrait of ego at rest: heavy with its own dreaming, steadied by supports it cannot see. Our names, roles, fears and stories are crutches. Spiritual masters have always said that most of us live inside such a dream with our eyes open, moving through the day on autopilot and never quite being in the present.
The vast, quiet space behind the head contains ancient towns, a distant figure and an open sky. Wide spaces suggest unexplored facets of one’s own subconscious mind that must be examined impartially. In The Transcendence of the Ego, Jean-Paul Sartre said that the ego is a thing of the world. It is external, out there, and easily influenced by externalities. Surmounting it requires an inner gaze and the development of a quality of witnessing.
Eye In The SkyRené Magritte, The False Mirror (1929)
Magritte depicts an eye that is turned inward. The painting portrays an eye that holds a vast expanse of blue sky. At its centre sits a black circle, the pupil: an emptiness through which everything is received. The one who watches is not different from the open space in which the sky appears or from the emptiness of the pupil. Buddhism points to the empty, luminous nature of mind. German priest Meister Eckhart said, “The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.” When seeker is centred, thoughts pass like clouds adrift, and she is not troubled by the colour of clouds or by the weather they bring.
The butterfly and the dissolving self
Zhuangzi dreaming of butterfly, ink paintingTaoist sage Zhuangzi dreamed he was a butterfly, happy and unaware of being anyone else. On waking, he could not say whether he was a man who had dreamt of a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming of a man. The old ink painting lets sleeper’s robes merge with the background, while the butterfly floats, weightless.
This is transcendence of the self. When self stops being a fixed thing, it loses the weight it carries and can assume different forms. Zhuangzi’s dream points to the constant transformation of things, and to freedom of one who is no longer in ego’s grip. True wisdom comes from mastering oneself and letting go of rigid viewpoints.
Life can be viewed from different perspectives. Why should the human-centric view be the final verdict on what is real and what isn’t? In Buddhist view, there is no permanent self. If self can change, what is the point in clinging to it? The spiritual life, in this view, is not about becoming someone better; it is about holding every identity lightly enough to let it change, as a butterfly leaves its chrysalis without regret.
No master can do the waking for you, and no painting can either. But the great images do what the great teachers do: they point. Sit quietly for a moment, and notice who is looking. That noticing is the awakening, and it can happen now
Compiled by Sonal Srivastava
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