I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For

Oh Bono. I remember when you sang this beloved song to my friends and me when we roadtripped to Ames, IA in the early 1990s to see you and your amazing band:

I have climbed highest mountains

I have run through the fields

Only to be with you

Only to be with you

I have run

I have crawled

I have scaled these city walls

These city walls

Only to be with you

But I still haven't found what I'm looking for

But I still haven't found what I'm looking for

And for a few hours, maybe a few days, after having that experience -- the same one the Italians had more recently in the video linked above, I thought maybe I had found what I was looking for. But then that feeling eventually faded.

When this song came on the radio on the way home from dinner with my kids last night, I realized something kinda major: I came closer to finding what I was looking for by sitting silently on a cushion for three days with perfect strangers than I've ever come doing one of my other favorite things (snuggling with my kids, swimming in the ocean, enjoying the love of a good man, drinking a glass of really great wine or eating a really delicious meal with friends, reading a really great story, hearing beautiful music, etc.).

This, I reckon, gets to the heart of Buddhist teachings: that the sweetest joy is found not in doing, but in being. That's not to say that my being isn't enhanced by any of the above activities or the feelings they evoke, just that touching its core is a deeper state of bliss than they could ever provide...