Alan watts - awakening ( let go )

so long as you are trying to make progress you will go up but up always implies down so while you are trying to get better and better and better that means that when you get to the best you can only go on to the worst and so you go round and round and round ever chasing the illusion that there is something outside yourself outside your here and now to be attained that will make things better and the thing is to recover from that illusion so a Buddha means somebody who has woken up and discovered that running around this thing may be fun and it may be good to run around but if you think you're going to get something out of it you're under illusion because you're forever the donkey with a carrot suspended from his own halter now then it goes on to say that there's only one place one point in this wheel from which you can become a Buddha and that's here the Devas are too happy to become Buddha's or to worry about becoming the Buddha the narcos are too miserable the assurance are too angry the animals are too dumb and the Preta is too frustrated only in the middle position the position of man which is you could say the equal position the position of sufficient equanimity to begin to think about getting off this rat race only from there you see can you become a Buddha so the position of a Buddha may be represented either as not on the wheel at all or as right in the middle of it it makes no difference and so he is just as in a way the axial point the still point of the turning world is to use TS Eliot's phrase is the unmoved centre the unmoved mover the prima mobile a the axial tree of the world all thought the navel that's why Yogi's are said to contemplate their navel the navel isn't on their tummy it's this place the navel of the world so that's the scheme of cosmology of ancient Indian cosmology in which Buddhism arises so you see therefore a Buddha is one who awakens from the illusion of samsara that is from the thought that there is something to get out of life that tomorrow will bring it to you that in the course of time it will be alright and therefore one is set pursuing time as if you were trying to quench your thirst by drinking salt water now I can exemplify this a little more strongly by relating Buddhism to the social system in which it arose a Buddhist monk is sometimes called a shramana s ra m en a shramana this is allied to the word shaman and if shaman is the holy man in a culture that is still hunting it isn't settled that isn't agrarian there is a very strong and important difference between a shaman and a priest a priest receives his ordination from his superiors he received something from a tradition which is handed down a shaman doesn't he receives his enlightenment by going off into the forest by himself to be completely alone a shaman is a man in other words who was undergone solitariness he's gone away into the forest to find out who he really is because it's very difficult to find that out while you're with other people and the reason is that other people are busy all the time telling you who you are in many many ways by the laws they impose on you by the behavior ruts they set on you by the things they tell you by the fact that they always call you by your name and by the fact that when you live among people you have to be in a state of ceaseless chatter but if you want to find out who you are before your father and mother conceived you who you really are you almost have to go off by yourself and go into the forest and stop talking even stop thinking words and be absolutely alone and listen to the great silences and then if you're lucky you recover from the illusion that you are just little me is so and so and you attain the state of Nirvana which means the blown-out state the relieved state the sigh of relief nirvana may be translated into English as few I've at last discovered that I don't have to survive I can survive of course but I don't really have to because you discover you see that what you really are doesn't have to survive because it's what there is the real you is it or that taught to Rama see that art thou as the Hindus say so then in the normal life of India which is not a hunting culture but a settled culture there are priests but there is something beyond the priests that is to say when a man or woman has fulfilled his or her life in the world of society it's the normal thing to do for a person to quit their status in society and become what's called a forest dweller that is almost you see to go back to the hunting culture they didn't divide people into two classes gree hosta which means householder and vanaprastha which means forest dweller and the older people or handover their occupations and positions to their children and enter the stage of vanaprastha or become a shramana and go outside the stockade I'm speaking metaphorically they sometimes do actually they sometimes don't and become a nobody they give up their name that is to say the label which designates who they are in terms of caste or class they become unclassified people that's why strictly speaking you see Hinduism and Buddhism are not religions you can classify the religions you can say what's your denomination Baptist Methodist Catholic Presbyterian Episcopalian Quaker etc etc etc see but strictly speaking a vanaprastha hey shramana has no label he is a unlabeled bottle so in the time when the Buddha lived about 600 BC the Hindu system had become somewhat decadent it isn't altogether clear what had happened to it but it is certain that it did seem in some way to be in need of reform and so though there were many reasons for this and the Buddha as a young man being basically troubled by the great problems that we're all troubled with the problem of suffering and the problem of what all this universe is about he endeavoured to follow the methods that were then being used by people who were Romana's or vanaprastha as forest dwellers and at that time it's very apparent that the main method that these people were using was an ascetic discipline starvation very arduous meditation practices probably self-flagellation and things of that kind and it said that for seven years he practiced these austerities but he found out that they didn't lead to liberation and all the people who were practicing them knew they didn't either but they felt that that was only because they weren't doing it hard enough and so he propounded instead the middle way the way that led to liberation from the rat race that I've drawn here neither through austerities nor through a pleasure seeking see these are the two ways the two paths the people who say the whole point of life is to enjoy it to get the most out of it you see and the other people who tried that and then they found it with sour grapes or something you know or they burn their fingers in the pursuit of pleasure the girl that was so beautiful eventually fell apart and has turned into a shrew and whatever it was and so they said instead let us torment ourselves a lot of people enjoyed us or get something special out of it I was in Mexico the summer and what I went there for was to study Mexican Catholicism well they make a great cult of suffering and I was very puzzled about this and wanted to understand it and everywhere you know they have these ghastly tormented Christ's all drooling with blood hanging on crosses in very contorted positions and I realized there are certain people who find that the sitting on the tip of a spike is the realest place in the world because when you're on the tip of a spike you know you're there there's no doubt about it and also you know that your expiating for everything this somehow by sitting on that's on the spike you are paying for your guilt and so long as you hurt you're alright see so these traumas were doing something of the same kind and the blood became enlightened became a Buddha he woke up at the moment when he gave up that kind of quest the moment he gave up as we should say trying to take the kingdom of heaven by storm now what does this mean it means that in his time the way of liberation had become competitive which meant it was on the wrong track there are a lot of people who we call it the holier-than-thou attitude but we find it today with some objectionable Westerners who go over to Japan to study Zen Buddhism and then come home and brag about the great disciplines they've undergone and say I sat with my legs crossed in one position for 10 hours as distinct from somebody else who only sat for five and always as this tendency you know to have a marathon and be in a competition with others or with oneself about these things but the moment you do that you're back on the wheel the best thing you can get by asceticism is to get up to the David world you can't get anywhere else by it you may get down to the Naraku world by asceticism to read the story tyst by Anatole France so he found you see that the the real path the middle way the meaning of the middle way is that it's the path that can't be followed because to get you onto the middle way I have to get into a dialogue with you you see and you say to me because after all it's always the student that raises the problem not the teacher you say well now what's the right thing to do I say back to you why are you looking for the right thing to do and then you have to consider your situation where you are and you say well I'm looking for the right thing to do because I feel that I'm in the wrong situation I don't have peace of mind why do you want peace of mind because my mind is disturbed then another words you as a disturbed mind are trying to find peace of mind your quest for peace of mind is the same thing as having a disturbed mind now if you don't have a disturbed mind you won't ask for peace of mind well how can I quiet my mind why are you asking to quiet your mind because it's disturbed you see where you are so in this way by this dialogue the the guru the teacher brings a person back to center so then this is the point all Buddhist teaching is a dialogue really and truly the man who goes out and leave society and becomes in monk is it a little bit too much Buddhism involves this act as a preliminary gesture but what it comes to in the end is the position of what's called a bodhisattva a bodhisattva means somebody who went out of society or we should say gave up the world in some way took on the the the robe took on the discipline he found what he was looking for but his finding it was absolutely simultaneous with his coming back into society and he's called a bodhisattva as distinct from a practicable de which means a private buddha huh one who goes out and doesn't come back and the Bodhisattva is considered as having a superior attainment superior insight so the important thing to remember then is Buddhism is a dialogue and it's teaching is a method and not a doctrine now the teaching Buddhism is summed up in what I call the Four Noble Truths the truth of suffering the truth about the origin of suffering the truth about the ceasing of suffering and the truth about the way to the ceasing of suffering Duke Hardy you H kha is the Sanskrit word we translate suffering a discord frustration something like that that's always the problem you see and this because of suffering is the reason why human beings seek out teachers and saviours I hurt and I don't want to hurt so that's the the universal problem see that everybody brings so then the teacher replies to this problem by saying you suffer because you crave things Trishna TR i sh na with from which we get our word first Trishna pregnant or desire is the cause of suffering that improves iron now the Buddhist analyzes this a bit the world is dukkha frustration and it's also characterized by impermanence Anita and by nonentity nurse Ann at man that means that no thing exists independently everything is a thing only in relation to everything else therefore there are no separate things no real selves or souls or egos and trying to cling to the world which is necessarily changing trying to have a separate cell and to protect it all these things are Trishna they are the cause of dukkha so the teachers having said this then the student comes back and says well how do I get rid of Trishna if Krishna desire is the cause of suffering couldn't I get rid of desire so as not to suffer and the teacher says well you try and this then is the first part of the discipline to try not to desire to calm your mind to practice centering to practice getting rid of all what they call pleasure KL e sa disturbing thoughts distractions evil passions the moderate appetites and come to apeksha or equanimity of mind and so the student practice is that and this is a very difficult and arduous discipline and all the time he sees the teacher watching him with a slightly sour expression on his face and he knows of course or thinks he knows that the teacher is fully aware of his inmost thoughts because you know it's the Indian way they go to meeting with the teacher and the teacher sits under a tree and smokes a cigarette or a pipe or something and all the students sit around cross-legged and they they meditate and sometimes the teacher meditates and they can see him occasionally looking at them like this you know and they think oh teacher knows what I'm thinking because he has the power of infinite vision you see and all seeing this and this bugs them completely because you see you remember how it was in school when you were trying to do something the teacher walked around and looked over your shoulder it puts you off completely so the hindu teacher or the buddhist teacher deliberately puts his students off and finally he raises in their minds an insoluble problem that if you are trying to stop desire so that you will not suffer aren't you still desiring to stop desire all the students may very well find that out for themselves and they say to the teacher but how are we to stop desire when we are desiring to stop desire so then the teacher can engage them in an extremely marvelous trap which is to say he can he can play it in a number of different directions one direction is to say well don't try to stop all desire but try to stop as much desire as you can stop you see where this is gonna go then they're going to say well I'm a little excessive about desiring to stop desire well if you're naturally excessive about it he says try to be as a slightly excessive as you can you see how do you see what's leading here if you follow that course you are being brought to center in the same way as I demonstrated before you're being brought to yourself to accept yourself as you are here and now totally but you can't do that directly because if you try to accept yourself you will always find that in yourself there is a spirit of the non acceptance of things and you have to accept that so teacher would say don't try to accept yourself more than you can accept yourself accept yourself as much as you can accept yourself because then you see you are also accepting the part of you that doesn't accept or he may try on another tack he may say all right now if you've seen that it's that desiring not to desire is simply another form of desire you you you're trying for example to get rid of your sensuous appetites you are going to give up booze and women and party the foie gras or whatever it may be and you then think well now yes this I must do and eventually you find that you are becoming proud of your success in mastering your appetites and you're beginning to depend on that so the teacher says do you see you're in the same trap as you always were formerly you sought spiritual security in booze and women and so on now you are seeking it in holiness formerly you bound yourself with chains at iron now you are bound with chains of gold formerly you boasted to all the boys how many sins you committed now you're boasting before the Lord of how many virtues you have same trap why do you do it so the student eventually finds there is no way at all to not desire even desiring not to desire is desiring even trying to accept oneself is a way of trying to escape from oneself because one hopes psychotherapeutic ly that by accepting yourself you will get rid of your nasty symptoms so you're not accepting them you're not accepting them by the gimmick by the pretense of trying to accept them so this is the way in which the dialogue of Buddhism begins to work and as it progresses step-by-step let me try and show you a little bit more how it works because I'm shortening it enormous Li in order to give you an outline of the whole thing what is going on between the teacher and the student the Buddha and his disciples is not merely a dialogue there is the the verbal dialogue yes that goes on but there also it spread over a long period of time and in the intervals the students are practicing meditations they are making efforts to control their minds and emotions and practicing those things which are the Buddhist equivalence of yoga so that in parallel to the intellectual discussion there is going on a total devotion of one's whole being to a quest morning noon and night and so you see this works up a very considerable psychic alertness it makes the student put a very considerable psychic investment in the task and he goes on you see he becomes more and more frustrated because as the trap closes and he finds that it's impossible to do the right thing because the right thing has always done for the wrong reason when the wrong man uses the right means the right means work in the wrong way you see there is something you could do to attain liberation or as the Christian would say union with God if you could do it but the Christian would say by reason of original sin you can't because through original sin everybody is basically selfish and you can't be unselfish for a selfish reason but you have him is selfish reasons so to him that hath shall be given but of course he doesn't need it from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he had for Bella what is he to do so you see in this way the teacher closes a trap on the student where he finds himself completely implemented not only can he not do anything that will bring about his salvation he is also unable not to do anything one might say you you must do nothing you must be completely passive but you can't do that because the moment you try to be passive you're doing something so you get into the state which they call in Zen Buddhism a mosquito biting an iron bull or as we would say in our Western idiom the state when the irresistible force meets the immovable object where something must be done but simply cannot be done and in this state of maximum frustration there is an opportunity to understand the situation to understand that I the meaning of the state I cannot do I cannot not do the meaning of the state is that the separate I which you thought yourself to be is an illusion that's why it cannot do and why it cannot not do you see what is our I our ego sometime in the development of man maybe three four or five thousand years ago we developed self-consciousness in a peculiar way we began to realize that by directed thought we could control our environment and then it was you see that we had a sense of responsibility let's just assume for the sake of argument that there was a time when nobody deliberated they did exactly what they felt like when you were hungry you ate when you were thirsty you drank when you were angry you hit something when you were happy you danced but you never stopped to think what was the right thing to do you just trusted your intuition your instincts your unconscious or whatever it might be called well that was great because nobody worried nobody had any problems when it was like that see a baby is in the same situation today now maybe you were unsuccessful maybe the thing you did spontaneous live is absolutely the wrong thing and the tiger ate you up well that was all right because it really doesn't matter if the tiger eats you up so long he went spending a previous time worrying about it see everybody dies and if you die clunk like that that's that you don't spend all your life before you die worrying about death you don't spend all your time before you get sick worrying about getting sick and when you see you move on that level of unpremeditated spontaneous behavior that's the golden age and the reason people look back with nostalgia to the golden age is because that was the time of irresponsibility but when people began to see that they could provide for the future and that they could look after things and take care and direct everything immediately anxiety came into the world see that was the fall of man because then the moment you start doing that you begin to think now having thought this question through and decided that such and such is the right thing to do have I thought it over carefully or not now that's a real Bugaboo of a question you know you'll go out of the house and you wonder did I turn off the gas though I think I did but on the other hand I'm not quite sure let's go back and see so having gone about five blocks you walk back yes you did turn it off and so you go out again you wonder again now I wonder if I really looked or whether I was so keen on finding out that I did turn it off with some sort of wishful thinking perverted my mind consciousness and whether I hadn't better check that I really did look properly you see well this way you never get away you're trapped so this you see is the problem of all self conscious beings they are they feel responsibility then they feel responsible for being responsible and responsible for being responsible for being responsible and there's no end to it so then in this obscure way everybody wants to get back to the golden age but they say if I just acted as I felt and was completely spontaneous goodness only knows what would happen Jesus you see said to do that he did and everybody reads it in the King James Bible where it means nothing take no thought for the morrow what you shall eat what you shall drink and wherewithal you shall be clothed consider the lilies of the field how they grow they toil not neither do they spin but I say unto you that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these now if God so clothe the grass of the field which today is and tomorrow is cast into the oven shall he not much more clothe you O ye of little faith I mean it sounds lovely read in church but what it says your boss says no that's that's the Sermon on the mountain that's not practical nobody can do that that maybe for a few Saints but after all in our practical life as of practicing Christians in the modern world we can't do that kind of thing well isn't that funny why can't you do it I mean that's the real reason for saying it in the first place Jesus said many very strange things for example in the parable of the Pharisee and the publican how the Pharisee goes up into the front row and says how good he is and that he's fulfilled all his obligations and paid the tithes and then was this this publican who goes into the back and sits there and beats his breast and says God be merciful to me a sinner and Jesus says now that man was the right man he was justified but the moment he's told that story everybody creeps into the back row and says God be merciful to me a sinner and they're all in the front row again nobody can do it you see that's why the story is told in the same way he says take no thought for the morrow stop being anxious like going to a psychiatrist he says you oh don't worry me stop being nervous can you see nobody can and also they find out to see that really in the end nobody can be God nobody can make life any better by being responsible about because whatever you gain in that direction you lose at the same time by being responsible we've created civilization medicine care of the poor everything but what a headache the thing has become as we solve all our problems we make more problems every problem you solve gives you 10 new problems I'm not saying don't do that but don't think you're going to get anywhere by doing that that's one way of arranging it that's one kind of dance you can have is to improve everything and have technology but it doesn't really solve anything and it's only in the moment you see when you fully understand that your situation as a human being is completely insoluble that there is no answer and that you give up looking for the answer that's that's Nirvana and that's how Buddhism works existence already includes non-existence you could say being and non-being constitute existence just as we know physically sound is constituted by sound silence in very rapid alternation so being non being constitute existence and existence is something of which you may say the game is worth the candle if it weren't it wouldn't be it's like that some people try to say there is good and bad with small G and small B and they E together constitute good capital G or one might say that humanity is and the good of humanity is a curious combination of beneficence and rascality of reason and passion and if human beings didn't have those two sides they would be less than human man is in a certain sense redeemed by his passions redeemed by being something of a rascal because if he weren't he would be like a steel with no salt in it the salt somehow is something that in a large quantity is horrible but in a certain small quantity delightful and so everybody has to be salted with a certain amount of unrespectable ax T otherwise they're impossible and intolerable the only thing is as a fervent cook don't overdo it it is in that respect you know that it's said of great gurus in India they'd have a very funny thing they say people Westerners go over and they meet this man who's supposed to be extremely holy and they're all at God you know and then after spending a few days with him they begin to wonder they find he smokes cigarette they find that loses his temper and they begin to think well is this man so wholly after all I mean he surely should not be dependent on these little habits and luxuries and so on and then they find he has a girlfriend and then they leave because they're so scandalized well then they the Hindus say are now you shouldn't get so upset about this because if this man didn't have a few little vices he would cease to manifest he would simply disappear he has to have these things to keep him grounded to keep him in the world or if suddenly you know he gets Cara bleah angry with a certain student and seems to lose his temper they say oh no no no he that's a tactical anger that he did on purpose to wake you up to something it was for your own development if your own good he didn't really feel angry at all but do you see the point there is something in the fact that if he didn't have these little attachments he wouldn't be manifesting he'd simply disappear there's something in that only don't take it to piously I think you get the point so then we now have to explore a very important aspect of the Joker as equivalent to the jeff's fly man you see he points out the four ways the monk the fakir the yogi and the fly man and all the first three ways are ways of great difficulty they involved very very strenuous discipline and of course as we get it through the books about George F the way of the sly man involves the discipline too but I think there's more to be said about the way of the sly man then appears in any of those writings because this is very closely connected with the whole approach of Taoism a Chinese philosophy of hue on non-aggression and is that what is called in Buddhism the middle way when the Buddha first discussed the middle way he put it like this he said to try and solve the problem of suffering by immersing yourself in pleasure only it leads to a hangover to try and solve the problem by asceticism also brings no liberation you merely get tied up in a kind of masochism where you say I know I'm right just so long as I'm hurting and all that is doing is expiating you're kind of infantile guilt sense so he said there is a middle way between asceticism on the one hand and hedonism on the other but actually the middle way is more subtle than that and it's beautifully discussed in professor balm a book called the philosophy of Buddha that's ba hm professor of philosophy at the University of New Mexico and he gives a very very fascinating analysis of the middle way in the form of a dialogue whereby the it works simply like this the student brings a problem to the teacher and he says I suffer and it's a problem to me and the teacher says you suffer because you desire if you didn't desire you wouldn't suffer so try not to desire and the student goes away and says I'm not very successful in this I can't stop it's terribly difficult and furthermore I find that in trying to stop desiring I'm desiring to stop desiring now what am I to do about that and the teacher replies do not desire to stop desiring any more than you can and so the student goes away and practices that but he comes back to the teacher and said I still find myself desiring excessively to stop desiring and it doesn't work so the teacher says do not desire too much not to desire to stop desiring how do you see what's happening step by step almost like Achilles approaching The Tortoise the student is being brought together with himself to the point where he catches up with his own inner being and can't accept it completely and that is you see the most difficult thing to do to accept oneself completely because the moment you can do that you have in effect done psychologically what is the equivalent of saying in philosophical or theological terms you as you are now are the Buddha just as I was explaining a few minutes ago that's unbelievable because we are always trying to get away from ourselves as we are now in one fashion or another and it's only we we will only stop doing that through a series of experiments in which we try resolutely to get away from ourselves as we are so that is the middle way but ordinarily in these other ways the way of the yogi the fakir and the monk the individual makes a big thing out of the work of liberation and especially likes the kind of teacher who will put him through the most severe paces it's interesting how there arise from time to time schools in the West where someone comes along offering people say look it's all very well to go to discussion groups and talk about these things but that's not the real thing what you need is really to get down and do some work and often these teachers are very rude and very stern but people love it and such a person will always attract a great following because people get the feeling now we are at serious business here this is really something you see and this you see though can be an awful problem let's suppose that you have some difficult and distressing habit like drinking too much and you're assured that once you've become the victim of this habit it's an extraordinarily difficult thing to get rid of it and it requires intense willpower and so that kills you right off you're a dead duck from then on yeah it's as if you see you had said to the devil one morning look I'm gonna get rid of you I'm not going to have anything to do with you anymore so the devil who is an archangel and his terribly clever he's all set for you and because he knows that you are getting out of his way he surrounds you with greater temptations than you ever imagined if you are going to outwit the devil it's terribly important that you don't give him any advance notice and this is where the work of the sly man comes in put it in other terms in Hindu or Buddhist terms in the popular terms of popular Hinduism and Buddhism liberation is getting out of the toils of karma it's like this during your many past lives you've done all kinds of deeds good and bad and you are reaping the consequences of these deeds today and also today you are setting up future consequences now before you can be liberated you've got to pay off your karmic debts and so the moment you set your foot on the path of liberation you are apt to find that all your karmic creditors will come to your door and that's why it's often said that people who start out on a serious work of yoga suddenly gets sick and lose their money and their best friends drop dead and all kinds of ghastly things happen that's because you see they serve notice that they will go to do this and so all the creditors came around if you're going to leave town and you owe lots of money you know you mustn't announce that you're leaving or give a farewell party to your friends because the grocer will find out so the the art of the fly man is to make no contest but simply to leave without one word in other words though that's the meaning of we'll weigh in in the technical vocabulary of Taoism were way not to interfere not to force things that's the best translation of will way not to force things but so he just drops it like that but you are here in this respect receive you your own worst enemy because even if you serve noticed privately on yourself that suddenly you're going to drop it all already the devil knows because who do you think the devil it is now this lies behind the whole problem that is discussed in the book then in the art of archery the necessity of letting go of the bowstring without first deciding to do so another way of putting it is that the decision to release the bowstring and the action of doing so must be simultaneous not to decide and then act but to act decide all at once now why is this if you are going to be an expert Archer you must shoot before you think otherwise it'll be too late you don't aim and then shoot it's all one action and this is true likewise of any sort of shooting the pistol shooting as well that if you aim if you if you decide and then fire you're apt to do things like pulling the trigger instead of squeezing all kinds of wrong things are done and you're always the moment too late if you decide first you have to act and decide simultaneously so what does that do you see that puts up a very curious problem which in its own turn becomes a bind to try and act quickly enough so that you overtake the preliminary decision to try not to decide first and that is an impossible problem I wonder if you ever read von Kleist story about the fighting bear the this is included in Nancy Wilson Ross's book the world of Zen as a kind of Western Zen there's a story about a man who has a fight with a circus bear and the the bear reads his mind and always four stalls any attack that he makes on it there's absolutely nothing he can do to get past the bear and so in the same way you might imagine a guru who is the mind reader and he always knows if you decide before you act and if you do you see the devil will catch you instead you see of deciding that you won't be an alcoholic anymore the only thing to do is not to drink without any previous decision on this matter but how can anyone do that you see that's the question how can I decide not to decide how can I announce that I won't make any announcement without making an announcement you see there is no way out of that bind try as you may you go on and on and on trying as her ago did to release the bowstring without thinking first to release it but then strangely enough one day the thing happened he did it and this is involved in our learning of almost all techniques that we work and work to achieve that final point of perfection and it doesn't come it doesn't come and then one day it happens now what is the reason for that is it simply and this is really you know a way it's usually explained but this is an oversimplification it is not that we have practiced it so often but it suddenly becomes perfect it is much more subtle than that what happens is that we've practiced so often that we find out we can't do it and it happens at the moment you know you can't do it when you reach a certain point of despair when you know that you are the one weird child who will never be able to swim at that moment you're swimming because the desperation and the total inability to do it at all has brought you to a point which we might call don't care you stopped trying you stopped not trying trying to get it that way you just have arrived at the insight that your decision your will doesn't have any part in the thing at all and that's what you needed to know you have overcome you see the illusion of having a separate ego there is no way of telling anyone that that's an illusion and getting appropriate action because we are thoroughly indoctrinated with the idea that it's real and if I say well I'm going to get rid of my ego that's what the Daoist call beating a drum in search of a fugitive he hears you coming so the ego that is to say the illusion of having a separate will and a separate eye center that can be an effective agent that cannot be overcome by a decision which seems to be centered in the ego you might as well put out fire with fire it can come only when an attempt to act from the ego Center has been revealed to be completely futile then the thing happens because you've really discovered that it was after all an illusion now be very careful how you formulate this sort of thing philosophically this could have cost correspond to the kind of person who feels unafraid and who feels very free because he's a complete fatalist a lot of people are and are very happy in their fatalism they they they really feel that they they don't do anything it just happens and that it's all life and that when they when they won't die until it's their time to die and so why worry everything they have the sense of everything is this happening to them and this is a kind of a floating feeling it's as if you didn't have to push things at all they just float along well now that state of affairs that's the feeling of you don't have to push anything it just floats along it's very similar to the experience I'm describing it's not the same thing but this person has interpreted it as a fatalist in a rather passive way that is to say he has felt that there still is some kind of a little differentiation between himself as the experience on the one and that force or set of forces called fate on the other he is pushed around but he witnesses being pushed around now in this state this person still has a little fragment of impurity left there's still one fly left in the ointment and that is the sensation of being pushed around there is still a fundamental division between the knower and the known and in this case the case of the fatalist the knower seems to be the passive thing and everything known the objective world or the goings-on of his own physiology they appear to be the active end and the knower just has the experience of himself being moved moved moved moved by the tides of life the important thing to find out is this that the sensation of being the knower and the experience of all this is not as it were aside from everything else that's going on but part of it just as you although you experience your own existence subjectively you are nevertheless part of the external world you are in my external world just as I am in your external world so in this way the final barrier between the knower and the known is broken down there is nobody as it were being carried along by fate there is just the process and all that you are is part of the process then there is a curious flip the individual who has always felt himself to be the tiny little thing on the end of the big determining process suddenly goes bloop have you watched sometimes a tiny little piece of mercury coming nearer and nearer to a large piece of mercury the sudden moment when they touch each other and put the little thing vanishes into the big one almost more dramatically than a drop into the ocean in this case that I'm talking about it isn't that the individual organism vanishes the individual human being doesn't vanish but he experiences no longer a passive relationship to the world he simply sees that all that he is and all that he ever was was something that the entire process was doing at the time in other words when he felt himself to be separate he sees that that is in a certain way just what he should have felt because that was what the process was doing in him in exactly the same way that it was giving him brown brown or blue eyes or blonde or brunette hair and that's going through the door and turning around and seeing there wasn't the door and finding that you aren't fated that you're not trapped because there's nobody in the trap and it takes something trapped to make a trap

Channel: Gaïa starseed

Views: 13,483

Rating: 4.9072847 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: ItXEhppnz5k

Length: 64min 47sec (3887 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 18 2020