But if you see that it's futile, then you can let go. Don't try to cling. Relax. And if you do that, you're in the state of nirvana, and you become a Buddha. And of course it means that you become a rather astonishing person. You may, of course, be subtle about it, and make like you're a very ordinary person, so that you don't get people mixed up. And so in Buddhism, the Buddha explained that his doctrine, his method, was a raft. It's sometimes called a yana, the word y-a-n-a, yana, means a vehicle, a conveyance. And when you cross a river on a raft, and you get to the other shore, you don't pick up the raft and carry it on your back. You leave it behind. But people who are, what I would call, hooked on religion, are always on the raft. They're going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth on the raft. So the clergyman tends to turn into a ferryman, who's always on the raft and never gets over to the other shore himself. Now there's something to be said for that, because how are we going to get the raft back to the first shore to bring over the other people? See? Somebody has to volunteer to take the back journey. But he must be awfully careful to realize that the real objective is to get the people across and set them free. If you dedicate yourself to ferrying people across, don't ask them to come back on the raft with you, because you'll get overcrowded, and people will think that the raft is the goal rather than the other shore. So I find this in actual practice, that when clergymen do not ever ask for money-- it's all right, like a doctor who simply charges a fee, says, you come to me, you pay me so much. But the clergyman says-- he doesn't say, pay me so much. He says, we would like your pledge, your voluntary contribution. See? And then nobody knows what to give. That's the idea of the raft. Now then, the fourth noble truth is called marga. This word means path. And the way of Buddhism is often called the noble eightfold path, because there are eight phases. I won't say steps, because they're not sequential. Samyak is a very curious phrase. It doesn't mean right in our sense of correct. Some is the same, really, as our word some-- total, complete, all-inclusive. We might use the word integrated, as when we say a person has integrity. A person who has integrity, we mean he's all of a piece. He's not divided against himself. So in this sense of samyak drishti, this is related to the word darshan, which means a point of view or viewing. When you go to visit a great guru or teacher, you have darshan. You look at him. And you offer your reverence to him. This is darshan. Many senses of it. But it means simply to view. Look at the view. So the samyak darshan is the complete view. For example, let's take the constellation called the Big Dipper. We look at it from a fairly restricted zone in space. And it always seems, whatever the season of the year, because we're so far away from it, that those stars in the Big Dipper are in the same position. But imagine looking at it from somewhere else in space altogether, and those stars would not look like a dipper. They'd be in another position. Now then, what is the true position of those stars? Don't you see there isn't one? Because wherever you look, the position alters. You could say that the true situation of those stars is how they are looked at from all points of view, all possible points of view. Inside the constellation, looking outwards. Outside the constellation, looking inwards. From everywhere and everywhere. But you see, there is no such thing as the truth. The world, in other words, is not existing independently of those who witness it. Because the world is precisely the relationship between the world and its witnesses. And so if there are no eyes in this world, the sun doesn't make any light, nor do the stars. So what is, is a relationship. You can, for example, prop up two sticks by leaning them against each other, and they will stand. But only by depending on each other. Take one away and the other falls. So in Buddhism it is taught that everything in this universe depends on everything else. That we have a kind of a huge network, and this is called the doctrine of mutual interdependence. All of it hangs on you, and you hang on all of it, just as the two sticks support each other. And this is conveyed in a symbol which is called Indra's net. Imagine a multidimensional spider's web in the early morning covered with dewdrops. And every dewdrop contains the reflection of all the other dewdrops. And in each reflected dewdrop, the reflections of all the other dewdrops in that reflection, and so ad infinitum. That is the Buddhist conception of the universe in an image. The Japanese call that "jiji-muge." A "ji" means a thing event, a happening. So between happening and happening, "mu" there is no "ge" separation. Jiji-muge. Now, so the first phase of the Eightfold Path has to do with one's view, understanding of the world. The second phase has to do with action, how you act. This idea of ethics is based on expediency. If you are engaged in the way of liberation, and you want to clarify your consciousness, doing that is inconsistent with certain kinds of action. So every Buddhist makes five vows, five precepts. And you may perhaps have heard the Buddhist formula of taking what is called panchasila, the five precepts. And they take what are called tisarana, the three refuges, and the five precepts. The refuges are the Buddha, the dharma, the doctrine, and the sangha, the fellowship of all those who are on the way. So the priest, the bhikkhu, the Buddhist monk, and the laypeople will chant the formula. buddham saranam gacchami dhammam saranam gacchami sangham saranam gacchami Those are the three refuges, the Buddha, the dharma, and the sangha. Then they take the five precepts. panatipatah vairamanisikapadam samadhyami adhinadhana vairamanisikapadam samadhyami kamesu micchacara vairamanisikapadam samadhyami musavada vairamanisikapadam samadhyami kamesu micchacara vairamanisikapadam samadhyami surameryamajapamadatana vairamanisikapadam samadhyami So they take these five precepts. panatipatah I undertake the precept to abstain from taking life adhinadhana I undertake the precept to abstain from taking what is not given kamesu micchacara I undertake the precept to abstain from exploiting the passions musavada I undertake the precept to abstain from falsifying speech surameryamajapamadatana I undertake the precept to abstain from being intoxicated by surameryamajapamadatana whatever they were I presume tadhi, which is alcohol, I don't know what else it was. Nobody does now. Because, you see, if you start killing people or taking life, you're in trouble. You set up an opposition and you've got to become involved in taking care of it. If you start stealing, you worry people. You upset people's orientation in life, because if you suddenly come back home for dinner and find somebody's stolen your table, where are you going to serve dinner? If you exploit your passions, it means that when you feel bored and somehow that life is a little bit empty, you say, well, now, what are we going to do this evening? Let's go and get stuffed. A lot of people who suffer from obesity are trying to simply fill their empty psyche by stuffing themselves with food. Well, it's the wrong cure. So likewise, musavada, if you start telling lies to everybody, you know what happens when you start telling lies. You have to tell extra lies to cover up the first one, and you get into the most hopeless misunderstanding. Speech collapses. And, of course, the intoxication is the same problem as the exploitation of the passions. So there's a purely kind of practical, expedient, utilitarian approach to morals. There's another side to this which doesn't enter into the precepts, which I will explain later. So that's the third phase of the Eightfold Path. No, the second phase. Then the third phase has to do with your mind, with your state of consciousness. And this has to do with what we would ordinarily call meditation. There are the two final, the seventh and eighth aspects of the path, are called samyak smriti and samyak samadhi. Smriti means recollection. That's the best English word for it. Now, do you understand? The word recollect is to gather together what has been scattered. What is the opposite of remember? Obviously dismember. What has been chopped up and scattered becomes re-membered. So in the Christian scheme, do this in remembrance of me. You see, the Christ has been sacrificed, chopped up. But the Mass is celebrated in remembrance. One of the old liturgies says, "The wheat which has been scattered all over the hills and grows up is gathered again into the bread." Remembered. Go back to your Hindu basis. The world is regarded as the dismemberment of the self, the Brahman, the Godhead. The one is dismembered into the many. So remembrance is realizing again that each single member of the many is really the one. So that's recollection. You can think of it, too, in another way. And it's really the same way if you think it through. I'm going to leave you with a few puzzles so that you can think them through, and I won't explain them. But another way is to be recollected, is to be completely here and now. Are you here and now? Are you really here? There was a wise old boy who used to give lectures on these things, and he would get up and not say a word. He would just look at the audience. And he'd examine every person individually. And they'd all start feeling uncomfortable. He wouldn't say anything. He'd look at them all. And then he'd suddenly say, "Wake up! You're all asleep. And if you don't wake up, I won't give you any lecture." Are you here, recollected? See, most people aren't. They're bothering about yesterday and wondering what they're going to do tomorrow. And aren't all here. That's a definition of sanity, to be all there. So to be recollected is to be completely alert, available for the present. Because that's the only place that you are ever going to be in. Yesterday doesn't exist. Tomorrow never comes. There is only today. A great Sanskrit sort of invocation says, "Look to this day, for it is life." In its brief course lie all the realities of our existence. Yesterday is but a memory. Tomorrow is only a vision. Look well, then, to this day. Such is the salutation of the dawn. So, "shmiti" means, then, recollectedness in the sense of being all here. In the sense that this is the only where there is. Then beyond that comes samadhi. Again, notice the presence of this word "sam," "sam." Samadhi is integrated consciousness in which there is no further separation between the knower and the known, the subject and the object. You are what you know. Now we think, in the ordinary way, that we are the witnesses of a constantly changing panorama of experience, from which we as the knowers of this, in a way, stand aside and watch it. We think of our minds as a kind of tablet upon which experience writes a record, and the tablet is always there, although the experience goes by. And eventually the experience, by writing so much on the tablet, wears it out. It's all scratched away, and you die. See? But actually, if you will investigate this, and you have to experiment on this, because I cannot explain it to you in words, you can only find it out for yourself. There is no difference between the knower and the known. When you say, "I see a sight," "I feel a feeling," you are using redundant language. "I see" implies the sight. "I feel" implies the feeling. Do you hear sounds? No. You just hear. Or you can say, "There are sounds." Either one will do. So you will find, if you thoroughly investigate the process of experiencing, that the experiencing is the same as the experiencer. And this is the state of samadhi. I put it originally in this form, that the organism and the environment are a single behavioral process. So, likewise, is the knower and the known. So you, as someone who is aware, and all that you are aware of is one process. That is the state of samadhi. And you get to that state by the practice of meditation. Every Buddha figure, practically, is seen in the sitting posture of meditation, which is sitting down quietly and being aware of all that goes on without comment, without thinking about it. And when you stop categorizing, verbalizing, talking to yourself inside your head, naturally the separations between, for example, knower and known, self and other, simply vanish. Can you point to the difference between my five fingers? Where will you put your finger if you want to point to the difference? You see, the idea of difference is an abstraction. It just isn't there in the physical world. Of course, that's not saying that the fingers are joined like a duck's claws with a web. But that, it's just that. They're not the same. That's an idea. They're not different. That's an idea. And these ideas just aren't here. See? You can't point to it. You can't put your finger on it. Get, then, to the state of affairs where you see the world free from concepts. That's what Buddhists mean by void. And they say the world is basically, they use the phrase shunya, that has a meaning of like empty, void. Everything is shunya. This has certainly also the meaning of anitya, of transience. But basically, it means you can't catch the world in a conceptual net. Just as if you try to catch water in a net, it all slips through. If you try to tie up water in a paper package or grab it in your hands, it all flows through. So shunya, it doesn't really mean that the world itself, that the energy of the world is nothing at all. It means that no concept of it is valid. You cannot make any one idea or belief or doctrine or system or theory tie the thing up. So if you go through this and you get completely blown out and released and are in the state of nirvana, for no reason that anybody can explain, just as, for example, as I pointed out, when you see that you can't change yourself, you can't lift yourself up by your own bootstraps, you then get a new access of psychic energy. So in exactly the same way, when you get to this state of nirvana, there wells up from within you what the Buddhists call karuna, or compassion, the sense that you aren't different from everybody else. Everybody else's suffering is your suffering. And so this tremendous sense of solidarity with all other beings arises. So that he who reaches nirvana doesn't, as it were, withdraw into a sort of isolated peace, but is always coming back into the world, into the difficulties, into the problems of life, in compassion for everyone else. You can't be saved alone, because you're not alone. You are the whole cosmos. You've been listening to Following the Middle Way with Alan Watts, from the Alan Watts Radio Series, number 6, on Buddhism. For information on how to obtain the radio series on cassette tape, call 1-800-969-2887. Or you can write to the Electronic University, P.O. Box 2309, San Anselmo, California, 94979. When you call or write, please indicate the name of your local station, that you heard the program Following the Middle Way, from the Alan Watts Radio Series, number 6, on Buddhism. {END} Wait Time : 0.00 sec Model Load: 0.75 sec Decoding : 1.57 sec Transcribe: 2264.84 sec Total Time: 2267.16 sec