We live our daily lives by assigning meaning to the world around us. But what if this very act of assigning meaning is the root of our suffering? Direct experience is about receiving the world as it is, without judgment or interpretation. It is an entryway to a freedom that transcends suffering.
What is Direct Experience?
We constantly judge and assign meaning to the world around us. For example, when we see a vast landscape and think, “This is beautiful,” we have already filtered the experience through our thoughts. True experience is simply “what is.” There is no need to label it as a “landscape” or call it “beautiful.”
The Beginning of Suffering: Assigning Meaning
Human beings are conditioned to label everything and assign meaning to their experiences. We categorize things—“This is a car,” “That is a mountain”—and judge them: “Sunny days are good,” “Rainy days are bad,” “Pain is unpleasant.”But this act of assigning meaning is precisely what creates suffering. The moment we define something, we impose a belief that “this is how it should be,” which creates resistance to reality.
Going Beyond the Filter
To experience life directly, we must become aware of the unconscious ways we perceive the world. Judgments, fixed beliefs, and conceptual thinking—such as “this should be like this” or “this is good or bad”—prevent us from seeing things as they truly are . Recognizing these filters and first distinguishing between facts and interpretations helps us loosen our resistance to reality, allowing us to live with greater freedom.
What Lies Beyond Direct Experience
As we release our interpretations, we also release our resistance to the world around us. With no resistance, suffering fades away. For example, we suffer because we assign a negative meaning to pain, thinking, “Pain is bad.” But when we simply acknowledge, “There is pain,” without attaching a judgment to it, pain becomes just another experience.
We are not trapped by suffering itself, but by the meanings we attach to it. When we distance ourselves from these interpretations, we encounter experiences as they are, beyond notions of good and bad.
An Experience Beyond Words
Direct experience is difficult to express in words. Words themselves are labels—they carry meaning and are not the experience itself. The moment we put something into words, it becomes a concept, separate from the actual experience.
Still, as human beings, we naturally seek to embrace this way of being—to go beyond meaning and simply exist in the present moment—which is true freedom.
Words and Image by K E I K O
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