I want to tell you about the one idea behind all our meditation.

Why am I sure this matters to every one of you? Because there is one thing that is the best investment you can make in your future. I don’t know a single person who isn’t worried about the future, who is fully happy with the present, or who has no regrets about the past. This is true for all of us.

In the Buddhist tradition there is an idea called buddha nature. In simple words: there is something in you that is always okay. Not after years of practice. Right now.

I know it’s hard to believe. There was a time in my life when I was destroying myself and making the people around me unhappy. If someone had told me then, “You are perfect just as you are,” I would have gotten even angrier.

Most of us come to meditation to fix ourselves. I tried that too. It’s the same war, just with a new weapon. Buddha nature asks a different question. Not “What’s broken in me?” but “What in me was always whole, and how can I notice it?”

There is an old story about gold that fell into the mud. The mud hides the gold, but it doesn’t change it. When you wash the mud off, the gold doesn’t get any better. It was gold the whole time. Smoking, alcohol, anger, envy, emptiness: that was my mud. I thought it was me. It wasn’t.

So what’s under the mud? Three things.

Awareness. Right now, something in you hears my voice and notices your thoughts. It’s like the sky. No storm can hurt the sky.

Compassion. You scratch when something itches. You move when your leg falls asleep. You want to feel better. This moving away from pain is already a seed of compassion. Even my anger was just a clumsy way of trying to stop hurting.

And wisdom. Something inside you that knows when you’re going the wrong way.

You don’t need to create any of this. The Tibetan word for meditation, “gom,” means “to get to know.” We get to know what’s already here. So don’t ask, “Do I feel good?” Ask, “Is there awareness right now?” If you know your mind is noisy, or you know you’re having a hard time, awareness is here. You are meditating.

Let’s try it. Think of how you drop into a chair after hard physical work. That first big breath out: “Ahhh.” Do it now. Let everything go. Just rest.

…That’s meditation. You didn’t make anything better. You were simply aware of this moment, and it was already good.

Make it a habit. A few times a day, stop for a second and ask: what is my mind doing right now? Don’t judge. Just know.

This is how my mud washed away. I didn’t fight my habits. I looked at them again and again, right in the moment they showed up. Each time, they had a little less power over me, because they had nowhere left to hide. And one day I noticed they were gone.

The mud washes away when you stop believing it’s you. You have been carrying this treasure the whole time. Meditation helps you see it.