Games Of Simplicity And Complexity

So, during the course of these seminars, I have been giving you what might be called

fundamental pre-educational instruction about various extremely simple things that were

left out of our ordinary education.

I described last night the thing about space that's ordinarily left out.

I also described in the course of the discussion the game about the in-group and the out-group,

the nice people and the nasty people, which is also left out of ordinary education.

And I have furthermore described the game of black and white, you know, the one where

we pretend that black and white don't go together and that one of them might win.

And I've also described to you the Zen game, which is taking a person's false premises

to their logical conclusion and seeing what happens, so that a person who comes, who is

born into the prejudice that one should get somehow one up on this universe, suddenly

finds himself confronted with an insoluble problem.

Only he doesn't know that his insoluble problem is based on asking or posing the problem in

a meaningless and false way.

And so it takes a certain kind of training for this to be found out.

So what we are really doing, although it's being done under the cover of studies of the

Orient and of Japanese culture and so on, what we are really doing is going down through

these cultural, historical, religious, artistic manifestations to the fundamental games which

life is playing.

And if you get the hang of these, the comprehension of various culture forms becomes ever so much

easier.

You see, whatever you study, to become a master of the subject, you need to realize what are

the fundamental principles.

And very few teachers of anything ever give them to you, because quite often they don't

know them.

I remember very well, the only time I've been a very serious examiner of candidates

for office was when I was an examining chaplain to the Bishop of Chicago and had to examine

young men wanting to be ordained to the ministry.

And I used to have many questions through which I could find out whether or not they

had the least comprehension of the principles of theology.

And it was only very rarely that any of them did, because they didn't teach the principles

in theological school.

They taught all the details, and so you memorized the details, and you had to know them, you

see, because in an examination they'd ask you about the details.

But when an examiner asked you to fit the details together into some sort of sensible

pattern, everybody was totally at a loss.

So you know, in Christian theology there are various doctrines.

We have things like the virgin birth, the idea that Jesus was born of a virgin.

We have the doctrine of the ascension of Jesus into heaven, the idea that his risen physical

body suddenly disappeared into heaven.

And we have, for example, in Christianity the celebration of the Mass, the sacrament

of Holy Communion.

And I used to ask candidates for the ministry, what was the relationship between these three

doctrines, or these three things, the virgin birth, the ascension, and the Holy Communion?

And they were at one total and utter loss.

They would say that the Holy Communion service mentioned the other two events, in the course

of saying the Creed.

But the idea that these things had any organic relation to each other, as they in fact do,

was utterly left out of their instruction.

And so it's in just the same way that all these fundamental games are left out of our

education, almost advisedly, because they're things that you really have to find out for

yourself.

And nobody ought to teach them to you.

But I want to speak this evening about another aspect of these fundamental games.

And we play all sorts of games with each other, and one very significant game that we play

is the game called "My Game's More Interesting Than Yours."

And this is a very, very important game for developing an elaborate culture.

And you remember when I was talking to you about those four great Japanese masters of

the 17th century, Hakuin and Bankei, Zen teachers, Basho as a poet, and Sengai, who was also

a Zen teacher, but is chiefly remembered as a painter.

And how Basho went back to the naive in poetry, and Sengai was the greatest master of what's

called "Zen-ga."

"Ga" in the sense is painting.

See, there is Zen-ga, that is Zen-style painting.

There is Hai-ga, which is the kind of painting that goes with Haiku writing.

Haiku, "hai," means "playful."

Playful painting, or so Haiku is, "ku" means "a phrase."

So Haiku is "a playful phrase."

Well, anyway, the point was that after the extreme refinement of Chinese poetry, and in

its wake, Japanese poetry, where you had to be terribly in the know to understand it at

all because the game had become so complicated, there was a genius like Basho who upstaged

everybody, you see, by his utterly disarming simplicity.

And the history of cultural development, the history of art, the history of architecture,

of poetry, of music, is always doing this.

It proceeds like this.

You see, we go back to our fundamental rhythm, which is sound and silence, or on and off.

And so you've just got...

And the life force says, "That's not very interesting."

"Oh, that's kind of boring."

See, and so it goes until you get to...

You know, that's only one bar.

And people kind of keep tracking that, you see.

And my, when you get to Hindu music, with those tremendous complex phrases, and they

know how to count all that, you see, they're not just fooling around.

They've got it all figured out, only they're counting in such a complicated way that you

have to be very, very good indeed at counting to follow.

And so in exactly the same way with poetry, dancing, steps, gestures, all these rhythms,

we work them out to marvelous complexity because what essentially happens is this.

Let's take a group of people who are playing drums.

Somebody starts out, you see, who sets a basic kind of simple rhythm.

Then the next fellow who joins in goes into the spaces which that fellow is leaving, so

that he does a rhythm consistent with his, though, that fills in his spaces.

Then a third person joins in, and he may fill in spaces that are still left, or give, by

coincidence with beats in their rhythms, extra emphasis to certain beats so that they sound

louder or softer, as the case may be.

And so they start vying with each other.

In this case, they have to vie with each other in a cooperative way, because whenever you

get an orchestra going, you can't have one person playing better than all the rest sort

of thing, or louder.

Just as in rowing, you can't say, well, the whole team rowed beautifully, and especially

the man in the stroke position who rowed faster than everybody else.

You see, so, but they manage, you see, within the general rule is that in this kind of game

we're going to cooperate, because if we don't, we can't have the game.

But within those limits, we are going to compete to see who can be more interesting, or create

a more interesting pattern, keeping all the time in accord with the bases, and vie with

each other as to who can be more skillful.

So also, in Indian music, very often you have a thing called the drone.

There is one instrument which is playing the tonal note, which is, as it were, the basis

of the chord, and all other notes which are being played by various other instruments

relate to this fundamental tone.

And so in the symbolism of Hindu music, they say the fundamental tone refers to the Brahman,

the one, and all the different melodies and harmonies related to that tone are the universe

of the many manifested from the one.

The tone always stays through, we call it the drone.

But it is extremely fascinating to listen just to the drone and see how much there is

to playing one note.

So but in relation to the drone, they build up the most unbelievably complex harmonies,

as in relation to a basic rhythm.

They build up a whole pattern of rhythms.

But you see what is going to happen as this pattern gets progressively complex.

It's going to fill in all the space, so that gradually you won't be able to hear it at

all.

As the musicians and the drummers vie with each other in making it ever so much more

subtle and complex, they are going to approach a point where you cease to be able to hear

it.

It is as if you were writing on a piece of paper and somebody did the basic shape and

then other people filled in and mixed up and went on and on and on creating ever more subtle

arabesques and designs until finally there wasn't any white background left and the whole

sheet was a black blob.

But that's exactly what happens in the development of an art form or a cultural system.

It happens with the development of a religion.

Because a religion as it evolves becomes ever and ever more subtle.

There is more theology.

There are more refinements of doctrine, refinements of ritual.

And so it goes also in manners.

How mannered can you be, you see?

You can become such a refined aristocrat that as I said about quoting Ruth Benedict's experience

of a Japanese girl who went to one of the very, very refined New England ladies' colleges

and found that she was equipped with a culture that nobody could even begin to understand

and her equipment was useless in that environment.

So in the development then of a culture you get more and more genteel until you've out-genteeled

everybody.

Also in a religion you can get more and more profound or even more and more saintly until

you've out-sainted everybody.

And then nobody can understand you, nobody can follow you.

So you're left all in a little world of your own playing this game.

And then somebody comes into the scene to one-up everybody and says, "Now look, let's

take for example cooking, a subject on which I have extremely authoritative prejudices.

You can get so way out in refined sauces and you can get into such incredible arguments

about French wines and their comparable merits and you can become a wine snob to the nth

degree."

So finally somebody suggests an entirely new approach which is a very, very far out group

of gourmets who are really hung up on water.

You know, water is the most beautiful substance and all these people have so ruined their

palates with these excessively refined foods, they can't taste water anymore.

And so the real in-school are the people who can taste water.

You see?

You see, water is good.

I remember I had an uncle who was terribly sick for a while, just horribly sick, and

when he got after his operations and so on he was convalescing and they gave him a drink

of water and he said, "Oh, for the first time in my life I realize what a good thing water

is."

So it's like when you have had every kind of pleasure and you've been able to own everything

you ever wanted and to go everywhere you ever wanted and so on, you have to come back from

all that to the realization of how marvelous it is just to exist.

But then the whole thing begins over again because the people who, all those gourmets

who started the pure water school, begin to become sensitive about waters from different

wells, different localities, and then they bring their friends to a water drinking ceremony

and somebody says, "Listen, tonight I have a special kind of water from a very, very

special well."

And there's really nothing like it.

Now all those guests are put in a very strange position because they've got to decide then

and there whether to say to him, "Listen man, you're just imagining things.

This water is alright, just like any other water, but that would be awfully discourteous

to the host."

And if they want to keep the game going, they've got to say, "Why yes, there is something a

little curiously different about this, isn't there?"

"Yeah, yeah, I believe, yeah, there's a subtle, very small point, but by Jove, we all see

it, you know, and therefore we're way in."

Now this really goes back to the fable of the Emperor's New Clothes.

And this is going on all the time in our various arts and cultures, and it's peculiarly evident

today in a period when social change is so fast and so bewildering that nobody really

knows what's what.

Let's take in the West the art world.

Well now, if you study the history of Western art, you will find that it is an extraordinarily

instructive thing.

You will be led up to the early 20th century, say in painting, in a very, very clear, logical

way.

But as you watch, as this historical process goes on, the painters become more and more

aware of the fact of a historical progression in art.

And they are more and more asking, "What is the new thing going to be?"

Now you know, for example, that when Beethoven's symphonies were first played, I'm thinking

particularly of the Third Symphony, the reviews in the Vienna newspapers were absolutely terrible.

His work was referred to as cacophony, as an absolute insult to the whole art of music,

as being dreadful.

And so people living now who are writing music, which to many ears is dreadful, are saying,

"But they said this about Beethoven.

What you're saying about my work."

And it's very fascinating to hear read one of the criticisms, contemporary criticisms,

of Beethoven's symphony without the reader first telling you what the context is, where

he's taking this from.

Can you imagine some critic talking about some contemporary composer?

And then he says, "Well, that was Baron von so-and-so talking about Beethoven."

Well, you see, the artist has in our era become aware of the history of art to a degree that

was not at all the case in the past.

There were no art historians when Bach was alive.

And they had no idea then that there was a sort of progress in the development of a culture

form.

They were trying to do certain things which they found important to do.

They were playing musical games or painting games and finding out things that might indeed

be new ways of treating it.

But they didn't have the idea that they ought to be finding more and more and more and more

new things.

In many cases, they were simply trying to penetrate more and more deeply the conceptions

of art that they already had.

But there wasn't this feeling of historical progress.

And so, as this feeling has come upon us today, not only in the history, say, of Western art

alone or the history of Western philosophy, but also the mingling of cultures brought

about by modern transportation in which the Western artists suddenly become aware of enormous

artistic traditions from the very ends of the earth.

We suddenly can't make up our minds and can find no standards as to what is really good.

And therefore, every kind of mountebank can challenge our situation and say, "Now this

is the newest thing which nobody has done before, that never was, that challenges you

completely."

And he may simply take a whole lot of wire and melt it so that it vaguely flows together,

and then bang it about for a while, and then upend it and stick it on an extremely tasteful

polished wood pedestal, and call it opus 35 and a half.

Now what are you to do about this?

It may be that this work has the same sort of interest that damp stains on a ceiling

sometimes have, because they become a Rorschach plot into which we can project many interesting

things.

So in the same way, this particular mess of mangled wire may have that sort of merit.

But lean on in the middle, or you'll miss something.

But everybody is vaguely wondering inside, you know, ought I to speak out on this and

declare myself therefore as some sort of Philistine?

I don't like this thing.

I don't want a bunch of mangled wire in my house and pay $10,000 for it.

But then if I do that, somebody very, very adept is going to come along and say, "Well,

I'm very sorry, but you see, I understand your prejudices and that you say this sort

of thing about this work of art, but there really are things to it which have some merit."

And if you understood the history of art a little better, you would see in fact that

this person has something to say.

Well then you feel absolutely awful that you didn't see it and you'd somehow missed out

on it.

But the fact of the matter is, you see, that all kinds of people are playing this game,

and quite sincerely in the sense that some of them don't know it's a game, because they

have in the course of coming across some extremely bizarre creation found that it indeed had

some merits that perhaps the artist never knew anything about.

You know, just in the same way as the artist of the patches of damp on the ceiling, that

was presumably an act of God, had no intention to make a representation of what you saw in

them.

So in the same way, the person who throws a lot of mangled wire together may occasionally

produce something that to a very perceptive person will be provocative, not through any

merit in the work of art, but through the beauty which was in the eye of the beholder.

And so that person in all sincerity says, "Well I did see this remarkable thing here,

and well, I do think there is something very special about this.

I must tell you a story to illustrate this.

We had an experiment, a few friends of ours, who were working on this chemical LSD.

And the experiment consisted in, I mean stop me if you've heard this one, but there were

a group of people who were very, very knowledgeable in the field of modern art, really knowledgeable.

The hostess of the group ran one of the most important galleries in New York.

There was present an eminent sculptor who is no mangled wire man, and one or two other

people who really understood, I would say, the whole history of modern art from the Baroque

on.

And we were all sitting around one painting, which was the first cubist painting ever done,

by Villon.

I think it was painted in about 1905.

And it was shown at the Armory Show in New York.

And it has great ovoid forms in it, with great detail and apparent overlapping of planes.

And we sat around this painting and looked at it.

And we were in a state of very, very heightened consciousness.

But the whole session was a discussion about this painting.

And gradually all of us developed an idea that is very fantastic.

The idea was that a good artist living at the beginning of the 20th century, who had

been really been to school, would be someone who would be competent in any technique that

had been involved in the course of Western painting.

In other words, he could perfectly well imitate Giotto if he wanted to.

He could imitate Michelangelo, Raphael, Rubens.

He could imitate the Dutch masters, the Flemings.

He could imitate Hieronymus Bosch.

He could finally go on and imitate Watteau and Cezanne, Matisse.

And what he did in this painting was that he painted five paintings on top of each other,

each one in the style of one of the great Western masters.

He overlapped them in such a way that they finally amalgamated together in a new style

which hadn't yet been seen, which was Cubism.

And we sat there and we traced out, pointing at the painting and going up and discussing

with the other people the various figures in it, done in the styles of the different

painters.

Until this extraordinary, amalgamated, technical tour de force emerged.

And we had a marvelous evening doing this.

But then when we all, after many, many days went by, thought about it, we realized that,

of course, what we'd been doing was projecting ourselves and our imaginations into this painting,

and that this might have nothing whatever to do with what Villon had intended.

But we were giving him the highest credit as a great artist, you see, for doing this

astonishing achievement.

So you see to what an extent the beholder enters into a work of art, how he contributes

things which the artist may never have seen.

And if this happens in the world of art, it happens to exactly the same degree in, say,

the world of religion.

How for century after century, intelligent people who have become more and more sophisticated

have read more and more meanings into the Bible, and have made this originally rather

crude piece of Bronze Age literature into a very, very sophisticated document.

So that somebody can say to you, "You mean you don't dig the Bible?"

Well, now what kind of person is likely to say this to you?

I mean, if some kind of fundamentalist comes along who believes that everything in the

Bible is literally true, you can dismiss him rather easily.

Thank you very much.

But when some great subtle theologian, say, Paul Tillich, or say, representing a very

different point of view, a Catholic theologian like Jacques Maritain, comes along and says,

"Now, now, wait a minute.

You can't dismiss this as a lot of Bronze Age literature.

Let's consider a few things.

Let's really go into it."

But as soon as that starts, you see, what is happening is that the highly evolved and

sophisticated mind of a modern biblical scholar or theologian is weaving his own marvelous

interpretation back into the text.

And what you're getting is not Isaiah or Jesus Christ.

You're getting Tillich or Maritain.

With all the historical experience and wisdom that they have through knowing the course

and the history of Western scholarship and theology, they feed it all back.

They feed the future back into the past and recreate the past with their own imaginations.

And which is fine.

That's creation after all, isn't it?

That's taking the scaffolding, or rather it's taking the steel beams or the bones and it's

putting flesh on them.

It is variations on a theme.

Beautiful.

But please, don't be bewildered by this kind of thing.

But be befuddled and led to undervalue your own honest feelings about religion, about

art, about anything.

Because anybody who involves you in this game is really...

I mean I'm saying he may be doing this unconsciously.

He may not be actually deliberately playing games with you.

But let's put it in this way.

You begin to believe about someone that the way they're living is sick.

This may or may not be true.

Let's suppose it isn't.

But nevertheless because you think that person is behaving in a sick way, you meet them one

morning and say, "Hi, are you feeling alright?"

"Why yes."

"What makes you ask?"

"I just wonder."

Then the next time you meet, "How are you doing?

You better today?"

"Better?

What do you mean better?

I was fine."

"Oh I see.

Well, yes, maybe."

"I just thought the other day you weren't quite up to scratch and you said something

about feeling a little off."

And so later on, say, it comes up, "Well, I suppose you are feeling alright."

I mean there are so many things about us that we're unconscious of.

It's difficult, you know, certain diseases like cancer aren't detected in their early

stages because we're not aware of them.

And of course, all psychological disorders, I mean it's of the essence of them that they're

unconscious and that you don't know what it is.

And you should be in a group of Jungians and be a naive person who ventures to tell a dream.

And you had a dream about something, you know, that was rather impressive and they shake

their heads and say, "I have a dream like that.

You better be careful.

You need to see an analyst in a hurry."

Well, I mean, is it that bad?

So when you get to among any group of devotees, I don't care what kind of devotee they are,

it doesn't make any difference, but they give the outside of the subtle feeling that,

"Yes, you're all right, but I mean there is this thing we have that is very, very important

and if you don't see it the way we do, somehow you're not quite human."

So you wonder, you see this immediately throws you into a self-questioning.

It implants a doubt in your mind.

And if, you know, you are really a genuine person, you have no problem with this.

Because you don't react by saying, "Oh my, isn't that impressive.

Maybe I better find out what all this is."

You don't do that on the one hand.

And on the other hand, you don't react in a hostile way and say, "Oh, shut up, leave

me alone, you're just playing games.

I mean, there might be something interesting to find out here.

And if so, I mean, you're bright and perky-eared and bushy-tailed.

And is there something here they've got?

Well, maybe there is.

But if you see that really what it is, is that they are, that it is essential to these

people to be the profoundest people there are, and they've got to have you convinced

of this in order to carry the conviction in themselves, then they're playing games with

you.

So the problem is to create the person who, by a fundamental honesty within himself, a

fundamental sincerity, is not going to be pushed around in these games.

And so this is the test which is set by a great teacher in any sphere,

whether it's religion or whether it's painting or whatever.

Do you, as a student, feel the need to justify yourself?

Lao Tzu said in a marvellous line, "Those who justify themselves do not convince."

Now, there is, as I said, on the one hand, the student who is overawed and always a prey,

therefore, to any charlatan who comes along with a big line.

And so the teacher will often play the role of charlatan.

Watch out for this.

This was the great point of Gurdjieff.

Gurdjieff went out of his way to play at being a charlatan.

He did the most elaborate acts of charlatanry that one ever heard of.

You all know who Gurdjieff was?

Well, Gurdjieff was a remarkable Russian, a countryman of Stalin from Georgia.

Not "Jow-ja," but Georgia in the Caucasus.

And he established a school for the harmonious development of man in Paris.

And it flourished from the early 1930s, or right through the 1930s, I would say.

That was its heyday.

And on into the '40s until he died.

And nobody could make up their minds whether this man was the greatest master since Jesus

Christ or whether he was an errant rascal.

He wrote a book called "All and Everything," which is Beelzebub's tales to his son, and

an incredibly funny book.

But Gurdjieff had an apartment in Paris, and all the meetings were secret.

You could only get there by invitation.

And when you arrived, you know, at this apartment, there would be some obscure little Russian

woman sitting at a table at the entrance, checking you out as to whether you were really

the person who had the invitation.

Immediately an atmosphere of mystery had been spread around.

And then you went through a passageway, which was piled all along one side with trunks,

as if, you know, he had just arrived.

And on top of these trunks there were various objects of art and stuff.

And finally you were shown into a room where everybody was sitting around in dead silence,

looking as if they had swallowed canaries.

And then after a while somebody would open a manuscript and begin to read some of Mr.

Gurdjieff's incomprehensible writings.

Everybody would sit and listen and try to make out whether this was the real revelation.

And as you sat there, you would become aware, in a funny way, of being watched.

And you would look around and suddenly notice that through the crack of a door, there was

a very impressive eye staring right at you.

Mr. Gurdjieff was around the corner of the door, peeking on his pupils, you know, and

seeing who was reacting in the right way.

You had the, do you really, you see, have the interior knowledge about this?

And there's the eye of the master watching you.

And when this got over, he would invite everybody to lunch.

And suddenly more rooms would be revealed in the background, and there were huge tables

spread, absolutely jammed with caviar and borscht and shashlik and pirozhki and vodka.

And little women and babushkas scurrying around, serving all this.

And suddenly Mr. Gurdjieff would order everybody to drink a toast.

One knuckle of vodka.

And everybody, even Titotl, had to drink, or they couldn't be his guests.

And he would toast the left-hand upper corner of the room.

All sorts of fantastic toasts would be drunk.

And nothing could put Mr. Gurdjieff under the table.

Nothing.

People would get busy and would get, they would feel, well, the teacher is testing us,

because he wants to see how we are in our cups, in vino veritas.

And then suddenly everything would be cleared and the meal would be over, and he would divide

the group into two.

One would stay home to wash up.

One would go out for a ride.

But everybody who went out for a ride must bring back a present for the people who stayed

home to wash up.

So this would happen, but it was on Sunday, or something, or a holiday, and all the stores

were closed.

So they couldn't find any presents, and they were a little bit too lazy to anyway.

And so he would humiliate them all by going back into his inner office and bringing out

presents for all those people who stayed home, because his inner office, which you would

think a great master would have, would be a library.

This man's office was a delicatessen.

It consisted shelf upon shelf of cheeses, of pâté de foie gras, of caviar, of candies,

and where he sat in his chair over his head, there hung on a thread a chocolate fish covered

in silver paper, which slowly revolved in the breezes.

Then he had an ashram at Fontainebleau, where everybody was given work assignments, and

they dug for many hours, working in the garden.

And then suddenly when they couldn't stand it any longer, and the rigors of it all were

too much, he would suddenly change everything, and they would have a feast.

Or he would teach them dances, in which all the limbs moved at different rhythms.

You know how hard it is to rub your stomach and pat your head at the same time, you know?

And he would make a do, all kinds of things like that.

Well the point is, that he dug in with this a cosmology, which was art blavatsky blavatsky

in being as absurd as it could possibly be.

And so here was this man, who for my judgment was a great man, and a very enlightened man,

and he was playing the role of a charlatan.

And by doing this, he was testing out the students, waiting for the person who would

say to him, "Now really Mr. Kerchev, come off it, what's all this about?"

But unfortunately, as is always the way, the teacher suffers from good students, like Ouspensky,

who swallowed it all hook, line, and sinker, and began to promulgate it as a system, when

the whole point of the system was lost.

So when you get a man like that, he is challenging you.

Now, some people got violent, and they couldn't stand him, and they said, "He's an immoral

bastard.

He is a charlatan.

He's a pervert.

He's everything.

He's a drunk.

Everything's wrong with him."

And they said, "Down with you."

The other people said, "Oh, Master, Master, oh dear Master," you know, and all this kind

of thing.

It was sickening.

And they didn't make out either.

But the people who graduated were the people of the middle way, who didn't have to be aggressive

on the one hand, and didn't have to be impressed on the other.

See?

That's the middle way.

That's getting the point.

But you see, how are you going to do that without trying to be natural?

See, you approach the teacher, "Am I really being natural with this guy?"

You see, and you're lost right there.

Because he is in the advantageous position in the game because he has nothing to lose.

You've defined him as the teacher, so he sits back and relaxes.

He can do anything and not lose face.

Like Suzuki, who can take forever to answer a question, or be fast asleep and be mistaken

for being in deep samadhi.

And because, after all, he doesn't have to prove anything.

He's not concerned as to whether he is or isn't a good Zen student.

He's just natural.

But he's not natural in a forced way.

That is to say, he's not going around trying to be natural, and therefore being a phony.

So then, in this whole evolution of what you might call competitive games as to which of

you is the wisest, watch out.

What is the test going to be in the end?

Which of you is the wisest?

Who can be banged about enough without screaming?

Is that the test?

That's often the way it's put.

How much suffering can you take?

See?

All right, we'll settle for that, you see, and then we can all sit on a pin and see how

long we can do it.

Or all sit like this and see how long we can take it without changing position.

And who's going to win?

Crazy.

Now, then, somebody's going to come up and say, "Yeah, but that's all very well."

But the point comes when you can suffer without screaming so much that nobody's quite sure

whether you were dead or not already.

After all, if you whip a dead horse, nothing happens.

And you put pins into a dead man and he won't scream.

So maybe your yogi self-control and your discipline has reached such a point that it's made you

effectively dead.

You can't be moved.

You know, that was that thing about that lecture on Zazen we had, that when there was a reaction

to something that went pop, some people's systems went "Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo"

all over the place when there was a little pop.

But the adept in Zazen, they went "pop" like this, you know, the click test and nothing

happened.

Well, you say, "Was he very, very calm and collected and he didn't really mind it?

Or was it that he's just got his feelings atrophied?

Which is it?"

You see?

Well, this is a game.

And we can play in all sorts of ways.

But if you compete too hard, you see, to be the great self-disciplined one, to be always

in possession of yourself, to be always immovable, you will eventually reach the point where

you will lose the game because someone will outplay you by accusing you of being a dummy.

And say, "But after all, isn't it great to have emotions?"

And one would look, "What are you missing?

You're a calm Buddha in nirvana and you have no emotions.

That's a wretched kind of a world to get mixed up in.

I like to feel very strongly one way or the other.

I'd be terribly happy and terribly miserable.

One's the price of the other, pretty much."

And so you can say to that stone Buddha sitting, "You've got no guts.

You won't let yourself get caught.

You won't let yourself fall in love because you're afraid."

So you say to it all sour grapes, "You shouldn't fall in love.

You shouldn't become attached to the world.

You're afraid of it."

So it goes.