Who is Perceiving?

"In the seen, there is only the seen. In the heard, only the heard. In the sensed, only the sensed. In the cognized, only the cognized."
Buddha, Bahiya Sutta (Udāna 1.10)

What is perception? What is doing it? And who or what is it that is perceiving? Can you know?

Sensory organs don’t truly perceive anything by themselves. Eyes can’t see. Tongue can’t taste. Fingers can’t touch. Nose can’t smell. Ears can’t hear.

So what is it that ultimately perceives the experience you are having right now?

Is it the brain, the mind, the soul? What are these if not ideas, images, constructs—mere appearances within perception?

And if they are just appearances, then what is perceiving them? What is perceiving the very idea of perception itself?

I invite you to stay with this question for a while. Not intellectually, but experientially—feeling its depth rather than trying to find an answer in the form of yet another concept.

If you’re patient enough, you might begin to sense something incredibly subtle reaching out to you from the depths of your own being.

Something unsettling at first, yet also strangely captivating—like a gaze piercing into the very essence of your soul.

That’s the great abyss, the great unknown, calling to you from beyond. Simply watch as it expands in all directions, permeating everything, every molecule and every being in the universe.

That abyss, and the silence that resides in it, is the only answer you will ever get to that primal question—“What is it that is perceiving?”—or, said in other words, “Who am I, truly?”

Every further description, every theory, every belief—no matter how sophisticated—will always be just another set of images appearing within perception.

And perception itself will never be anything else but a sparkle of light, floating lost into that unfathomable absence that pervades everything.

How miraculous is this? You can’t deny that perception is happening, can you? Something is unfolding right before your eyes. Call it as you wish: perception, presence, or simply life happening.

Yet, when you try to find a center for that experience, a specific place where this event is registered, you find none.

Anything you can localize, define, or describe is still the observed—never the observer.

In other words, as far as you can tell, relying not on learned concepts or imagination but on direct, empirical experience alone, there is no perceiver whatsoever of your experience.

There might be an image of a “me” perceiving this present moment, but there is no reality beyond that image.

All you can ever find is the unfolding of the experience itself, within which all images come and go—including those you identify as yourself.

Where does this unfolding happen? When does it happen? To whom does it happen? Such questions only make sense within the realm of the perceived, where reference points exist and one thing is measured against another.

But when turned back toward perception itself, they lose all relevance. Perception is one without a second—nothing stands beside it. What could you measure it with or compare it against?

It stands alone, unborn, infinite, and self-sustaining, miraculously suspended in the great abyss of the unknown.

When faced with the great void, all attempts at defining it cannot but melt away like ice under the sun.

At last, even the word “perception” fails, for it implies a perceiver and a perceived—yet no real distinction can be found, except as a mental construct.

There is only this—this reality, unconditionally present, effortlessly generating itself.

No inside or outside to this unfolding. No past or future. No size or depth. No origin or direction. No inherent meaning whatsoever.

No one watching it. No one doing it.

Only this.

IMF, Vang Vieng - Laos, 5 February 2025