Together, Not One After the Other

Sit and look at any single object in front of you, a flower in a vase, a brass diya, the rim of a tea cup. We usually feel that the object is there first, and the awareness of it follows. Today, look more carefully. Notice that you cannot find a moment of object-without-awareness, or awareness-without-object. They arrive together, like two sides of the same handclap. Stay with that simultaneous arrival, breath after breath. The wall between the world and the one who knows it is thinner than the day usually pretends.