We all need to inquire into our own hearts to see if there is a place in us that really loves to know the truth, where we love it enough to do whatever we can to inquire, to investigate.

You can look into this feeling of being scared, but your inquiry needs to also involve your attitude toward the fear. If, for example, you have the judgment that it is better not to feel fear, this is a bias that mitigates against openly inquiring into the fear.

You can say it is emptiness, you can say it is mystery, you can say it is stillness, you can say it is peace, you can say it is neither existence nor nonexistence, you can say it is the ultimate beloved, you can say it is the annihilation of all ego, you can say it is the source of all awareness, you can say it is the ground of everything, you can

You might forget this because inquiry will bring out whatever difficulties you have, and when you are suffering a great deal, you might think that inquiry will ease that suffering and solve your problems. But if you go off on that tangent, it is endless, and eventually your inquiry will come to dead end.

There can be inquiry even with stillness, when the mind is completely gone.

a pointer. We can use our words, concepts, and thoughts as pointers toward truth, toward what is possible, rather than as boundaries for what can be known: “This is a possibility” instead of “That is what you will find.”

Your Being is what is constantly manifesting as you. It thinks by using your brain. It walks by using your legs. But in your daily experience, you think you are a bundle of arms and legs and thoughts, and do not experience the unity that underlies all of your experience.

heart and renew our resolve, but rarely do we feel certain about what will bring us to the states we desire.

So openness obviously means that we do not have a purpose for the inquiry;