The Snipe Hunt

A snipe hunt is a type of practical joke or fool's errand, in existence in North America as early as the 1840s, in which an unsuspecting newcomer is duped into trying to catch an elusive, nonexistent animal called a snipe.
—-Wikipedia

Hi, Robert, Thoughts that pop-up while reading The Ten Thousand Things:

Firstly, thank you for this exciting and unique book! Your take on spiritual awareness is incredibly genuine, uncompromising and revelatory. I would compare the way you roll it out with the technique of photography's development in the dark room. The blank paper, slowly but definitely starts unveiling details of a raw chunk of Reality that may strike the eye and mind by unexpected shades, contrasts and meanings.

Going to specifics: You imply that the state of Awareness in your case occurred in a dream, spontaneously and in the absence of any intentional spiritual pursuit and systematic 'work' such as meditation, prayer, yoga. I have no doubts about the sincerity of this affirmation, nevertheless something interesting could be noticed on the backstage, something that can be construed as an intense and effective exercise: the identification with the now of the photographer when shooting a photo.

The process of capturing a picture with a camera requires visual focus, sharp attention, a keen desire to find the perfect angle, the suitable amount of light, the intended visual effect, effort which eventually turns into... chasing the moment. The impassioned photographer is more prompt than other professionals to develop a sense of here and now. Does this mean that all photographers are on the verge of enlightenment? Well, perhaps it's not that easy. There are for sure some other favorable circumstances in your case (Walter's prolonged influence on your stream of thoughts, other events that I am not aware of). So, I believe that the practice was there, and applied in the most effective way, by not hunting an ultimate spiritual goal, but doing something else. Your thoughts on this?

Hi—In my view, an “ultimate spiritual goal,” is a vain idea, so anyone who is chasing after that fantasy is on a snipe hunt, I say.

I don't imagine that all photographers are on the verge of enlightenment. Most of the ones I have known seemed about as confused as anyone else. And anyway, the idea of enlightenment is part of the snipe hunt. Enlightenment is the snipe.

To me, this seems a simple matter. Certain sages over the years have laid it out clearly, but most of their listeners—those with an interest in these matters, which already is only a small fraction of humanity—have misunderstood the message because “it couldn’t be that simple.”

Awakening, in the way I mean that word, has nothing to do with deities, faith, transcendence, mastery, or believing anything. Those who make the sage into a master or a prophet will never understand. The sage is not a prophet, but simply an ordinary human being who understands himself or herself as entirely subject to the human condition—not more than human, but fully human. Having come to understand this, the sage no longer seeks to escape from or transcend the human condition and so lives each moment without resistance to what is. 

In his or her awakeness, the sage has seen that the sense of self is a kind of illusion, the source of which is the human nervous system. Moment by moment, countless data from trillions of sensory cells are assembled into the “world,” including the “myself” at the center of that world who imagines that it can stand apart from that constant assembling and observe it or control it. But that assembling is automatic--an involuntary process that takes place entirely unconsciously. It can be neither noticed nor controlled. No one is “doing” it. No "myself" is doing it!

The supposed “myself” at the imagined center of that confected world does not actually exist except as an outcome of those unconscious, involuntary processes that constantly create a "world," including “myself” as the experiencer of that world.

The nagging understanding that myself has no permanence and will not survive death drives fearful efforts to "realize" a myself that will not die. But that project presumes that an imagined entity that already does not exist will later become nonexistent. There is no "later," and nothing is becoming anything. This is it!

Bodies die of course. That’s just natural. That is death. But apart from a body, what dies is a stream of habitual thoughts such as thoughts about “myself” dying or thoughts about “myself” attaining something spiritual.

At this point, the committed snipe hunters will object: "But Robert, if there is no actual myself, then who is the one that finds himself awake?" 

Failing to understand the limits of language, the snipe hunters fail to see how words have baffled them, particularly spirituality words. And no matter how many times they hear me say "this is it," they will find a way to believe in something "better," something more "evolved," something “deathless,” something "spiritual," the attainment of which will save them from the total impermanence of the human primate animal condition.

The real point of their objections is that the snipe hunt must never be allowed to end.