===== Philosophies Of Asia - 01 - Ecozen =====

I suppose most of you have heard of Zen, but before going on to explain any details about it, I want to make one thing absolutely clear.
I am not a Zen Buddhist. I am not advocating Zen Buddhism. I am not trying to convert anyone to it.
I have nothing to sell. I am an entertainer.
That is to say, in the same sense, that when you go to a concert and you listen to someone play Mozart, he has nothing to sell except the sound of the music.
He doesn't want to convert you to anything. He doesn't want you to join an organization in favor of Mozart's music as opposed to, say, Beethoven's.
And I approach you in the same spirit as a musician with his piano or violinist with his violin.
I just want you to enjoy a point of view which I enjoy.
Now then, when that's been said, and I hope it's put your minds at rest, let me give you, first of all, some simple historical information.
Zen, Zen is a form of Buddhism.
It originated in China about 500 A.D.
And about 1200 A.D. it migrated to Japan, where it exists today.
And it is a form, it's a way of life that has had an immense influence on the arts and on the culture, the poetry and architecture of the Far East.
It has lately become of enormous interest to many people in other parts of the world.
Now, normally, when one talks about Buddhism, and Zen is a form of Buddhism, it is supposed that you're talking about a religion.
And people are apt to classify themselves as Buddhists, as they might say, I am a Catholic, or a Methodist, or a Baptist, or an Episcopalian, or a Jew.
But that is rather misleading.
Buddhism is not a religion in that sense.
If we want to find an equivalent to Buddhism in our society today in the West, probably the nearest thing to it is psychotherapy.
When a person goes to a psychiatrist or psychoanalyst to work out a serious personal problem, not because he's just nutty,
I mean, not necessarily because he has hallucination or excessive singing in the ears with no clear physical origin,
but when a person feels that his whole life is somehow disoriented and wrong,
and he doesn't go to the preacher because the preacher only moralizes to him and says,
my man, you should have more faith in God or something.
So he goes instead to a doctor because in our day, a man with the tag of science on him has more prestige than a man who has the tag of religion.
And so when a psychiatrist goes to work on you, his objective is more or less to change your state of consciousness.
That is to say, if your state of consciousness, your state of mind, is one of being day after day constantly depressed,
the objective of going to a psychiatrist or a psychotherapist is to have your state of consciousness changed to one of happiness.
Now, in a somewhat similar way, the objective of Buddhism in all its forms is to bring about a fundamental change
change in a human being's everyday state of consciousness.
If I make it yet more specific, it's to bring about a change in your sense of personal identity,
that is to say, in your sensation of who and what you are.
And in this way, Buddhism, which I suppose you know, is a method of changing consciousness,
discovered or invented by a man called Gotama, who lived in India shortly after 600 BC,
who was given the title Buddha because the word means the awakened one,
the man who woke up.
And therefore, that very title suggests that ordinary people are asleep.
I remember a very wise man who used to give lectures like this.
And when he came in, he used to be silent and he would look at the audience
and he had gazed at everybody in the audience particularly for a long time
and everybody would begin feeling vaguely embarrassed.
And when he'd gazed at them for a long time, he'd say,
Wake up!
You're all asleep.
And if you don't wake up, I won't give any lecture.
Now, in what sense are we asleep?
The Buddhist would say that almost all human beings have a phony sense of identity,
a delusion, a hallucination as to who they are.
Now, I'm terribly interested in this problem of identity.
And I try and find out what people mean when they say the word I.
I think this is one of the most fascinating questions.
Who do you think you are?
Now, what seems to develop is this.
Most people think that I is a center of sensitivity somewhere inside their skin.
And the majority of people feel that it's in their heads.
Civilizations in different periods of history have differed about this.
Some people feel that they exist in the solar plexus.
Other people feel that they exist about here.
But in American culture today, or in the Western culture in general,
most people feel that they exist in here.
And there is, as it were, a little man sitting inside the center of the skull.
And he has a television screen in front of him,
which gives him all messages from the eyeballs.
He has earphones on, and that gives him all messages from the ears.
And he has in front of him a control panel with various dials and buttons and things
which enable him to influence the arms and legs
and to get all sorts of information from the nerve ends.
And that's you.
So we say in popular speech,
I have a body.
Not I am a body, but I have one,
because I am the owner of the body in the same way as I own an automobile.
And I can take the automobile to the mechanic,
and occasionally in the same way I have to take my body
to the mechanic, the surgeon, the dentist, the doctor,
and have it repaired.
But it belongs to me.
It goes along with me.
I'm in it.
A child, for example, can ask mother,
Mom, who would I have been
if my father had been someone else?
That seems a perfectly simple and logical question for a child to ask.
Because of the presumption that
your parents gave you your body
and you were popped into it,
maybe at the moment of conception
or maybe at the moment of birth,
from a repository of souls in heaven,
and your parents simply provided the physical vehicle.
So that age-long idea that is indigenous,
especially to the Western world,
is that I am something inside a body,
and I am not quite sure whether I am or am not my body.
Some doubt about it.
I say I think.
I walk.
I talk.
But I don't say I beat my heart.
I don't say I shape my bones.
I don't say I grow my hair.
I feel that my heart beating,
my hair growing,
my bone shaping
is something that happens to me.
And I don't know how it's done.
But other things I do.
And next,
I feel quite surely
that everything outside my body
is quite definitely not me.
There are two kinds of things outside my body.
Number one is other people.
And they're the same sort of thing as I am.
But also, they're all little men
locked up inside their skins.
And they're intelligent.
They have feelings and values.
And are capable of love and virtue.
But number two
is the world that's non-human
that we call nature.
And that's stupid.
It has no mind.
It has emotions, maybe, and animals.
But on the whole,
it's a pretty grim business.
Dog eat dog.
And when it gets to the geological level,
it's as dumb as dumb can be.
It's a mechanism.
And there's an awful lot of it.
And that's what we live in the middle of.
And the purpose of being human
is, we feel,
to subjugate nature.
To make it obey our will.
And we arrived here.
We don't feel that we belong in this world.
It's foreign to us.
In the words of the poet
Haussman,
I, a stranger and afraid
in a world I never made.
And so, all around us today,
we see the signs of man's battle with nature.
I'm living at the moment
in a marvelous house
in the Hollywood Hills.
And we are overlooking a lake.
And on the other side of the lake,
the whole hill
has suddenly been interrupted
with a ghastly gash
where they have made level lots
for building tract homes
of the kind you would build
on a flat plain.
This is called
the conquest of nature.
These houses will eventually
fall down the hill
because they are causing soil erosion
and they're being maximally stupid.
The proper way to build a house
on a hillside
is to do it in such a way
as to effect
the minimum interference
with the nature of the hill.
After all,
the whole point of living in the hills
is to live in the hills.
There's no point
in converting the hills
into something flat
and then going and living there.
You can do that already
on the ground.
So people,
the more people live in the hills,
the more they spoil the hills
and they're just the same
as people living on the flat ground.
I mean, how stupid can you get?
Well, anyway,
this is one of the symptoms
of our phony sense of identity,
of our phony feeling
that we are something lonely,
locked up in a bag of skin,
confronted with a world,
an external, alien, foreign world
that is not me.
Now, according to certain
of these great ancient philosophies
like Buddhism,
this sensation of being
a separate, lonely individual
is a hallucination.
It's a hallucination
brought about
by various causes,
the way we are brought up,
being the chief of them,
of course.
I remember as a child,
and you probably have
very similar memories to mine,
that all our parents
were desperately interested
in identifying us.
Don't you remember
that sometimes you went out
and played with other children,
and there was someone
in the group of other children
you admired and look up to,
and you came home
imitating the mannerisms
of that other child.
And your mother said to you,
Johnny, Johnny,
that's not you,
that's Peter.
And you felt a little bit ashamed,
because somehow
you would let her down.
She wanted you to be you,
her child,
and not Mrs. Jones' child,
Peter.
And so, in many ways,
we are all taught this.
For example,
the main thing
that we are all taught
in childhood
is that you must do
that which will only be appreciated
if you do it voluntarily.
Now, darling,
a dutiful child
must love its mother.
But now,
I don't want you to do it
because I say so,
but because you really want to.
Or,
you must be free.
See, this comes into politics.
Everybody must vote.
You see, imagine,
you're members of a democracy.
And you must be members of a democracy.
See, you're ordered to.
Crazy.
Also,
thou shalt love the Lord thy God.
Is that a commandment or a joke?
You know,
if you suggest that the Lord is joking,
most people in our culture are offended
because they have a very moronic conception of God
as a person totally devoid of humor.
But the Lord is highly capable of joking
because joking is one of the most constructive things you can do.
So,
when you are told
who you are
and that you must be free,
furthermore,
that you must survive,
you must go on living,
and that becomes a kind of compulsion,
you get mixed up.
It's very simple.
Of course you get mixed up.
If you think you must do something
which will only be the thing required of you
if you do it freely,
these are the sort of influences, then,
that cause human beings all over the world
to feel isolated,
to feel that they are centers of awareness
locked up in bags of skin.
Now, this sensation of our identity
can be shown and demonstrated to be false.
by some of the disciplines of our own science.
When we describe a human being
or any other living organism
from a scientific point of view,
all that means is that we're describing it carefully.
We are going to describe very carefully
what a human being is
and what a human being does.
All right.
And we find that as we go on with that description,
we can't describe the human being
without describing the environment.
We can't say what a human being is doing
without also saying
what the world around him is doing.
Just imagine for a moment
that you couldn't see anything up here except me.
You couldn't see the curtains behind me.
You couldn't see the stage.
You couldn't see the microphone.
You could only see me.
That was all you could see.
What would you be looking at?
You wouldn't see me at all
because you wouldn't see my edges.
And my edges are rather important
for seeing me.
My edges would be identical
with the edge of your eyesight
with that vague oval curve
which is the field of vision.
And what you would be looking at
would be my necktie,
my nose,
my eyes,
and so on.
But you wouldn't see my edges.
So you'd be confronted
with a very strange monster
and you wouldn't know
it was a human being.
Because to see me
you need to see my background.
And therein lies a clue
of which we are mostly ignorant.
In Buddhist theory,
the cause of our phony sense of identity
is called avidya
and that means ignorance.
Although it's better to pronounce it
ignorance,
the having a deluded sense of identity
is the result of ignoring certain things.
So when you look at me
and I manage by behaving up here
in a kind of a more or less interesting way,
I cause you to ignore my background
because I concentrate attention on me.
Just like a conjurer,
a stage magician,
in order to perform his tricks
misdirects your attention.
He talks to you about something
he's doing here
and he talks to you about his fingers
and how empty they are
and he can pull something out of his pocket
in plain sight
and you don't notice it.
And so a magic happens.
That's ignorance.
Selective attention.
Focusing your consciousness
on one thing
to the exclusion
of many other things.
So in this way,
we concentrate on the things,
the figures,
and we ignore,
we don't concentrate
on the background.
And so we come to think
that the figure
exists independently
of the background.
But actually,
they go together.
And they go together
just as inseparably
as backs go with fronts,
as positives go with negatives,
as ups go with downs,
and as life goes with death.
You can't separate it.
So there's a sort
of secret conspiracy
between the figure
and the background.
They are really one,
but they look different.
They need each other
just as male needs female
and vice versa.
But we are ordinarily
completely unaware of this.
So then,
when the scientist
starts paying attention
to behavior of people
and things carefully,
he discovers
that they go together
that the behavior
of the organism
is inseparable
from the behavior
of its environment.
So, you see,
if I'm to describe
what I am doing,
what am I doing?
Am I just waving my legs
back and forth?
No.
I'm walking.
And in order
to speak about walking,
you have to speak about
the space
in which I am walking,
about the floor.
About the direction,
left or right,
in relation to what kind
of room,
what kind of stage,
what kind of situation.
Because if, obviously,
if there isn't a ground
underneath me,
I can't very well walk.
So the description
of what I am doing
involves the description
of the world.
And so the biologist
comes to say
that what he is describing
is no longer
merely the organism
and its behavior.
He is describing
a field
which he now calls
the organism
hyphen environment.
And that field
is what
the individual
actually is.
Now this is very
clearly recognized
in all sorts
of sciences.
But the average
individual,
and indeed
the average scientist,
does not
feel
in a way
that corresponds
to his theory.
He still feels
as if he were
a center
of sensitivity
locked up
inside a bag
of skin.
The object
of Buddhist
discipline
or
methods
of
psychological
training
is, as it were,
to turn
that feeling
inside out.
To bring about
a state of affairs
in which
the individual
feels himself
to be
everything
that there
is,
the whole
cosmos,
focused,
expressing
itself
here.
And you,
as the whole
cosmos,
expressing
itself
there and
so on.
That what,
in other words,
the reality
of myself
fundamentally
is,
not something
inside my
skin,
but everything,
and I mean
everything,
outside my
skin,
but doing
what is my
skin and
inside it.
I mean,
imagine that
every one of
us,
look,
in the same
way that the
sea,
when the
ocean,
has a wave
on it.
The wave
is not
separate from
the ocean,
is it?
Every wave
on the ocean
is the whole
ocean waving.
The ocean
waves and it
says,
yo-hoo,
I'm here,
see?
But I do,
I can wave
all over the
place.
I can wave
in many different
ways.
I can wave
this way
and wave
that way.
So,
the ocean
of being
waves every
one of us
and we
are its
waves.
But the
wave is
fundamentally
the ocean.
Now,
in that
way,
your sense
of identity
would be
turned inside
out.
You wouldn't
forget who
you were,
you wouldn't
forget your
name and
address,
your telephone
number,
your social
security
number,
and what
sort of
role you're
supposed to
occupy in
society.
But you
would know
that this
particular role
that you play,
this particular
personality that
you are,
is superficial
and the real
you is all
that there is.


===== Philosophies Of Asia - 02 - Hinduism I =====

I wonder, I wonder, what you would do if you had the power to dream at night any dream you wanted to dream.
And you would, of course, be able to alter your time sense and slip, say, 75 years of subjective time into eight hours of sleep.
You would, I suppose, start out by fulfilling all your wishes.
You could design for yourself what would be the most ecstatic life, love affairs, banquets, dancing girls, wonderful journeys, gardens, music beyond belief.
And then after a couple of months of this sort of thing at 75 years a night, you would be getting a little taste for something different.
And you would move over to an adventurous dimension where there were certain dangers involved and the thrill of dealing with dangers.
And you could rescue princesses from dragons and go on dangerous journeys, make wonderful explosions and blow them up, eventually get into contest with enemies.
And after you'd done that for some time, you'd think up a new wrinkle, to forget that you were dreaming, so that you would think it was all for real, and to be anxious about it.
And then, because it'd be so great when you woke up, and then you'd say, well, like children who dare each other on things, how far out could you get?
What could you take?
What dimension of being lost, of abandonment of your power, what dimension of that could you stand?
You could ask yourself this, because you know you'd eventually wake up.
And after you'd gone on doing this, you see, for some time, you would suddenly find yourselves, sitting around in this room, with all your personal involvements, problems, etc., talking with me.
How do you know that that's not what you're doing?
Could be.
Because, after all, what would you do if you were God?
If you were what there is, the self.
In the Upanishads, the basic texts of Hinduism, one of them starts out saying, in the beginning was the self.
And looking around, it said, I am.
And thus it is that everyone to this day, when asked who is there, says it is I, and thereafter gives whatever particular name he may have.
For if you were God, and in the sense that you knew everything, and you were completely transparent to yourself through and through, you would be bored.
Because, if looking at it from another way, we push technology to its furthest possible development.
And we had, instead of a dial telephone on one's desk, a more complex system of buttons, and one touch, beep, would give you anything you wanted.
Aladdin's lamp.
You would eventually have to introduce a button labelled surprise.
Because all perfectly known futures, as I pointed out, are past.
They have happened, virtually.
It is only the true future is a surprise.
So if you were God, you would say to yourself, man, get lost.
And it's strange that this idea is obscurely embedded in the Christian tradition, when in the epistle to the Philippians, St. Paul speaks of God the Son, the Logos, the Word of God, who is incarnate in Christ, and says,
Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, thought not equality with God a thing to be clung to, but made himself of no reputation, and humbled himself, and was found in fashion as a man, and became obedient to death.
Same idea.
Same idea as the idea of the dream.
You get in that very far-out dream, of getting as extreme as you can get.
And so this, then, is the basis of the Hindu view of the universe and of man.
The Hindu looks upon the universe as a drama.
The Westerner, of course, looks upon the universe as a construct, as something made.
And it is not, therefore, insignificant that Jesus was the son of a carpenter.
The Chinese looks upon the universe as an organism, as we shall subsequently see.
But the dramatic idea is basic to Hinduism.
Now, you can speak about Hinduism on two levels, at least.
One I will call the metaphysical level, and the other the mythological level.
If you speak on the metaphysical level, you can speak only in negative language.
You can say what the divine, the ultimate reality, is not.
If you speak on the mythological level, you may speak of what the divine is like.
Because myth is not a falsehood, as one uses the word in a sophisticated way.
A myth is an image, a concrete image, in terms of which man makes sense of the world.
And thus, the idea of God the Father, or God the Maker, is a myth.
Because it's an image.
And Christian theologians distinguish equally between two kinds of theological language,
which are respectively called cataphatic and apophatic.
Apophatic language is negative, as when we say God is infinite and eternal.
Cataphatic language is mythological, as when we say God the Father, God is love,
and all the positive designations.
We are not saying God is a cosmic male parent, but is analogous with the Father.
So with Hinduism.
But what I'm going to speak to you, first of all, is the mythological language of Hinduism.
The idea of the universe as the big act.
The universe is God playing hide-and-seek with himself.
For God is thought of fundamentally to the Hindu as the self, the self, the cosmic I.
And it is a basic proposition for the Hindu, that only the self, the Godhead, is real.
There is nothing other than the Godhead.
So that the appearance, the feeling that there are other things than the Godhead, is called Maya.
Maya.
We ordinarily translate that word illusion.
But you must be careful about the word illusion.
Illusion is related to the Latin ludere.
And that means play.
And this is why the analogy of the world is dramatic.
It's a play.
In the sense of a stage play.
Now, when you go to the theatre, you know what you're going to see is not for real.
Because the proscenium arch tells you that.
That everything that happens on the far side of that arch is only in play, not serious.
But the actor, and you will hope that he will be good at it, is going to try and persuade you that it's for real.
So that he will so move you that you are crying or sitting in anxiety upon the edge of your chair.
And so the audience is almost persuaded to be taken in.
Now, what about if this would happen with the very best actor of all, the great actor?
The audience would, of course, be completely taken in.
But in this case, of course, the actor and the audience are the same.
The self.
The self has thus the capacity to abandon itself.
To forget itself.
To hide from itself.
And thus, to make the most completely convincing illusion.
But in play.
And so the activity, the creative activity of the Godhead in Hinduism is called Leela.
Which means play.
Our word lilt is related to it, I think.
But so also in the book of Proverbs.
You will find a discourse being given by the divine wisdom.
The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his ways before his works of old.
I think it's the 22nd chapter of Proverbs.
In the course of which, the wisdom says that its delight was to rejoice, the King James Bible says, in the presence of God and with the sons of men.
But the Hebrew translated rejoice says play.
Rejoice is a sort of dignified Elizabethan.
But it says play.
And St. Thomas, aware of this, said that the divine wisdom was above all to be compared with games.
Because games are played for their own sake.
And not for any sort of ulterior motive.
So also music is a kind of non-purposive thing.
Because you don't either play music to reach a destination, nor do you dance to reach a particular place on the floor.
It is the doing of it itself that is important.
Because after all, if the object of music were to gain a certain destination, those orchestras that played fastest would be considered the best.
So the idea is that dancing and music, more than other arts, represent the nature of this world.
That it is playful.
That it is sport.
That it may be sincere, but is definitely not serious.
And as G.K. Chesterton well put it once, the angels fly because they take themselves lightly.
How much more so the lord of the angels.
So if a beautiful lady should say to me, I love you.
And I were to reply, are you serious or are you just playing with me?
That would be quite the wrong response.
Because I hope she's not serious and that she will play with me.
I should say, are you sincere or are you just toying with me?
Because you see, the word play has many different senses.
A person who is playing the organ in church is certainly not doing something trivial.
When you go to see a play called Hamlet, you're not seeing something trivial.
When the concert artist plays Mozart, he is certainly entertaining you, but it's not a trivial entertainment.
But on the other hand, we would use play in quite a different sense when we mean just fooling around, doing it for kicks.
So it is fundamental, as a matter of fact, to both the Hindu and the Christian traditions that the universe is the play of God.
But the Christian thinks of it in the terms of construction play, like building with blocks.
And the Hindu thinks of it as dramatic play, of the actual participation of the Godhead in the creation, so that every being whatsoever is God in disguise.
Hinduism speaks of the Godhead as uses the word Brahman.
This is a neuter form in Sanskrit from the root brich, which means to grow, to expand, to swell.
The neuter form, Brahman, does not have quite the connotation then, you see, of kingship that we will find attached to the Western idea of God, but is also referred to as Atman.
And this word, and this word, we translate ordinarily, the self.
So you can have the para, param, you put the M in to connect the particle, paramatman, which means para, the supreme self,
or sometimes just the Atman alone, and that means the self in you.
But the fundamental principle of Indian philosophy is Atman is Brahman.
Your self is the supreme self.
Or, it is expressed also in the formula, tat, tvam, assi, colloquially translated, you're it.
Or, tat, that, tvam, Latin tuam, you, assi, are, you are that, that thou art.
Uh, tat, of course, is, uh, the first word uttered by a baby.
Da, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta.
And fathers flatter themselves that it's saying dada.
It's not. It's saying that.
Da, da, da, da, da, da.
And so it's pointing to thatness in everything.
It's very important to see this, because, um, everything is just that.
Uh, I could say it in a negative way, which you won't appreciate,
which you won't appreciate at first, perhaps.
Everything is meaningless.
Only words have meaning.
Because they point to something other than themselves.
The sound water is undrinkable.
Heh.
But it points to the drinkable reality.
But you say, though, what is that pointing at the water?
And somebody says water.
He's not being correct.
Because what you're pointing at is not the noise water.
So it's not water.
It's that.
Da.
And water's a kind of jazz.
Blub, blub, blub, blub, blub, blub, blub.
And, uh, it's just doing that.
And, uh, you can get to see, too, people are a kind of jazz.
They talk and communicate with each other.
But what does that mean?
Well, they get together, and they make more people, and they do this, and they do that,
and they eat, and they go on doing this jazz.
But it's just jazz.
And you begin to see, as you do that, everything's like music, you see.
It's all these complicated vibrations.
Ka-choo, ka-choo, ka-choo, ka-choo, ka-choo, ka-choo, ka-choo, ka-choo, ka-choo, ka-choo, ka-choo, ka-choo, ka-choo, ka-choo.
In all kinds of ways.
That's that.
Or thatness.
Ta-tha-tha, also called in Sanskrit.
So anyway, this is the fundamental notion that you, uh, are really what there is.
The works.
Only you're playing hide and seek with yourself.
And on a stupendous scale, Hindus measure time in units which in Sanskrit are called kalpa.
And a kalpa is a period of 4,320,000 years.
And, uh, there are two kinds of kalpa.
One is called manvantara, and the other is called pralaya.
Manvantara is the kalpa in which the universe is manifested.
In other words, in which God puts on his big act.
And pralaya is the kalpa, succeeding kalpa, in which the universe is unmanifested.
And the Godhead does not dream, but is awake to its own nature.
So that for, uh, these are called respectively, the days and the nights of the Brahman.
And this goes on forever and ever and ever and ever.
The days and nights adding up into years and centuries and eons.
They speak of crore.
There's a Sanskrit measure, crore.
C-R-O-R-E.
Uh, sort of a word that really, I think, means umpteen.
Uh, crores of kalpas.
And, uh, this is the in-breathing and the out-breathing.
Uh, there's the word hungsa.
In this word in Sanskrit, hungsa, means a swan or a big water bird like a gander.
There's a myth that the, there is in the beginning the divine bird which lays the egg of the world.
And the egg splits and the upper is the heavens and the lower is the earth.
Now, so when, uh, the worlds are manifested, the Lord breathing out says, hung.
And when the worlds are withdrawn, the breath comes back, hung.
But if you say hungsa, hungsa hung, sah hung, it becomes sah hung, sah hung.
Sah, uh hung, that means, sah means that, the truth, uh hung, I am, I am that.
It's like, uh, imagine, uh, when we get, uh, to the final moment in which the world is blown up.
You know, imagine the countdown.
This is the end, somebody's pushed the button.
Eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.
What are you listening to?
The sound of the waves.
And you can sit and listen to the little waves on the seashore.
And you get back here into this kind of thinking and you're hearing the ocean of the universe going.
And that's your breathing too.
It's all one rhythm.
So it may be that every star was once a planet populated by intelligent people
who found out about the fundamental energy of the universe and blew themselves up.
And as they blew up, they scattered all kinds of stuff out which became little planets.
Which, in a long time, life started all over again.
Because the Hindu theory is very odd.
Every Kalpa in the Manvantara period, where there's a manifested world, is divided into four subdivisions of time,
each one of which is called a Yuga.
That means roughly an epoch or an era.
And there are four Yugas, and they're named after the different throws in the Indian game of dice.
There are four such throws, and the first is called Krita.
That means, Kri means to do, as when we say something is done, truly done.
It's the perfect throw of four.
The second is called Tretta, which is the throw of three.
The next is called Dvapara, which is the throw of two.
And the final one is called Kali, which means the worst throw, which is the throw of one.
Now, each of these periods of the Kalpa are of different lengths.
Krita is the longest, and Kali is the shortest, and so ranged.
So that when the world is first manifested, as in those dreams that I were mentioning to you,
the world is in a golden age to begin with.
It's perfect.
And that is the longest period of time.
Then when we get a little bit more adventurous, you see,
the Tretta means that in this era a kind of disharmonious element enters into things.
It's like a three-legged chair isn't so secure as a four-legged chair.
It's just a bit inclined to tip.
And there's a fly in the ointment, the snake in the garden.
Then comes Dvapara, in which the forces of good and evil are equally balanced.
And finally Kali, which is the shortest period, where the forces of evil are triumphant,
and the world is destroyed at the end of it.
For then the Godhead appears in the form of Shiva,
who represents the destructive aspect of the divine energy,
whereas Brahma is the creative, Vishnu the preserver, Shiva the destroyer.
But Shiva is always the destroyer in the sense of the liberator,
the guy who breaks up the ruts.
And he comes on with a blue body and ten arms and a necklace of skulls.
Indian gods have many arms because they are cosmic centipedes.
They do all things without having to think about it,
like the centipede doesn't have to think about how to manipulate its legs,
like you don't have to think how to grow your hair.
And as Shiva dances what is called the Tandava,
which is the dance of destruction at the end of the cycle,
at the end of the Kalpa,
you will see that his hands contain clubs and knives and bells,
but one hand is like that.
And that gesture means don't be afraid.
It's a big act.
It is all, as it were, the outflowing of your own consciousness,
of your own mind.
Now then, Hindu life is related to this cosmology.
And the objective of life is, of course, in the end,
to wake up from the dream when you've had enough.
And so the dreaming process is called sometimes sangsara.
Sangsara is the round, the rat race.
And sangsara is divided into six divisions.
I'd better draw a map, I think.
This is common, you see, cosmology to both the Hindus and the Buddhists.


===== Philosophies Of Asia - 03 - Hinduism II =====

This is the world of the deva, and this is the same root from which we get both divine and devil.
But deva means angel.
The highest and most successful beings in the universe.
And so opposite, this is the world of naraka, naraka, who are the most unsuccessful.
These are the purgatorial worlds of extreme suffering.
This is the world of ashura.
They are also angels, but they are angry angels, representing the wrath potential of energy.
This is the world of animals.
This is the world of preta, for which we have no English equivalent.
They are hungry or frustrated spirits who have enormous stomachs but mouths only the size of needles.
Vast appetite and no means of fulfillment.
And this is the manu world, that is to say, the world of man.
You don't have to take this literally.
You could say, when you are extremely happy or ecstatic, you're here.
When you are miserable, you're here.
When you're dumb, you're here.
When you're mad, you're here.
When you're frustrated, you're here.
But when you're more or less your normal, rational self, you're here.
Now, so, all life, through the period of the Kalpas, goes grinding around this wheel.
And if you go up, and you succeed, and you get to the top, you have to come down.
They don't see success, in other words, in the world, as a method of liberation, because it implies failure.
So, the idea of liberation, which is called moksha, is the ideal of Hindu life.
Wake up, it's a dream.
And in time, there is no hope in time.
Everything is going to get worse in time.
Because, as you know, it does.
We all fall apart in the end.
Everything falls apart.
Institutions, buildings, nations.
It all crumbles.
And people say, well, that's an awfully pessimistic philosophy.
Well, is it?
I would rather say that the people who have hope in the future are the miserable people.
Because they're like donkeys, chasing carrots that are dangled before their noses,
from sticks attached to their collars.
And they pursue, and they pursue in vain.
Always hoping that tomorrow will be the great thing.
And therefore, incapable of enjoying themselves today.
People who live for the future never get there.
Because when their plans mature, they are not there to enjoy them.
They're the sort of people who spend their lives saving for their old age.
They're trying to teach their children to do the same thing.
So that when they retire at 65, you know, they have false teeth and wrinkles and prostate trouble and all that sort of thing.
Where were you going?
What did you think it was all about?
Furthermore, the fact that life is transient is part of its liveliness.
The poets, in speaking of the transients of the world, always utter their best poetry.
You know, our revels now are ended.
And these, our actors, as I foretold you, are all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air.
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples,
the great earth itself, I, all which it inherit, shall dissolve.
And like this insubstantial and pageant faded, leave not a rack behind.
We are such stuff as dreams are made of, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.
And said so well, it doesn't seem so bad after all, does it?
You see, there's always in the poetry of Evanescence a kind of funny nostalgia.
Moralists will say,
Those lovely lips which you so delight to kiss today
will in a few years rot and disclose the grinning teeth of a skull.
So what?
The skull says,
Lying in the grass,
Chattering finch and waterfly are not merrier than I.
Here among the flowers I lie, laughing everlastingly.
No, I may not tell the best.
Surely, friends, I could have guessed
Death was but the good king's jest.
It was hid so carefully.
And monks used to keep skulls on their desks.
And people nowadays think that was very morbid.
But it's only,
I went and visited a chapel in the Via Veneto in Rome,
where there's a crypt where all the altar furnishings are made out of human bones.
The altars are piles of skulls.
There are rib bones arranged across the ceiling like floral patterns with vertebrae representing flowers.
And they're all dead Capuchin monks.
And there's a funny little monk collecting the admissions up at the top.
And he has one of the funniest grins on his face I've seen in a long time.
I said to him, you know, on the day of resurrection,
there's going to be an awful lot of scuttling up this narrow staircase.
People trying to reassemble their bones.
Oh, dear father, isn't that my fifth metatarsal?
So,
the whole idea, you see,
is that everything's falling apart.
So don't try and stop it.
When you're falling off a precipice,
it doesn't do you any good to hang on to a rock that's falling with you.
See?
But everything is doing that.
And so, again, this is another case of our completely wasting our energy
in trying to prevent the world from falling apart.
Don't do it.
And then you'll be able to do something
interesting
with the free energy.
So that's moksha.
Because when the Hindu says
everything is unreal,
the Westerner reacts and says,
no, no, you can't treat life as a dream.
It's serious.
It's real.
It's for real.
And what do you mean by that?
Look, how real do you want it to be?
This is, in other words,
everything, insofar as it's falling apart,
everything is changing,
it is like smoke.
And we all feel that smoke has a lesser degree of reality than wood.
It's an image of the evanescent,
of the ghostly.
So there's this idea,
the whole world is this mirage.
That doesn't mean it's a bad thing.
It's only bad if you cling to it,
if you try to lean on it.
But if you don't lean on it,
it's a grand illusion.
So the word maya,
that means not only illusion,
but it means art,
it means magic,
and it means creative power.
So this is the big act.
And, uh,
it's perhaps
easier to feel the world in that way
in a tropical country
where
death is very common
and where you just watch things dissolve before your eyes
and yet burst out and grow again.
The whole world is changing.
It may be easier to think that way
than in our environment.
Although when you're out in California,
um,
the human landscape changes so fast
that, uh,
no,
no town is the same for two years.
Any mailing list that you have,
uh,
changes
one-third
addresses per annum.
Nothing stays put.
The hills are shadows
and they flow from form to form
and nothing stands.
Now, uh,
this, you see,
is not a pessimistic attitude,
therefore, at all.
To be able to realize
that this world
is simply a dream.
A dancing play of smoke.
Fascinating, yes,
but don't lean on it.
Life is a bridge,
says one of the Hindu sayings.
Pass over it,
but build no house upon it.
And so,
immediately you see that.
This is responsible
for the enormous gaiety
of certain Hindu sages.
This is a thing
that often puzzles Westerners.
Uh,
the element of,
they expected anybody
who's an ascetic
or a sage or something
to be rather miserable.
With a glum face.
But on the contrary,
you take this character
who's going around these days,
Maharshi Mahesh,
he's always laughing.
Because,
you see through it,
he looks on every side
and there is the face
of the beloved,
of the divinity,
in everybody,
in every direction,
in everything,
playing at being you.
And you can look down
into a person's eyes,
way, way in,
and you see the self,
the eternal divine.
And what is so funny
when it puts on an expression,
saying,
what, me?
And the guru,
the teacher.
When people go to a guru,
they get all sorts
of funny ideas.
They think,
oh, he's looking right through me.
He sees me through and through.
He knows how awful I am.
Reads my most secret thoughts.
Because he has a funny look
in his face.
He isn't even interested
in your secret thoughts.
He is looking straight
at the Godhead in you
with a funny expression
on his face
which is saying,
why are you trying
to kid me?
Come off it, Shiva.
I know who you are.
But,
and therefore,
you see,
his role
is to
gently
humor you
into waking up
as to your true nature.
Now, of course,
as I intimated earlier,
the Hindu is therefore saying,
everybody is God.
And this is why
when a Hindu greets you,
he does this.
That is the act of puja,
or worship
to the Godhead in you.
And our theologians
get rather worried about that.
Because, you see,
the two conceptions of God
are different.
Our conception
is of the boss man,
the king.
Theirs is of the cosmic centipede
with the many arms,
who does not have to think
how to make the world,
or rather to act the world.
That would be
an insufferable nuisance.
You may think it
rather wonderful
when St. Thomas tries
to explain
that God is fully aware
of everything that happens,
and in every detail
is willing
each single vibration
of any mosquito's wing.
But when you really
begin to think about it,
that approach is
intellectual elephantiasis.
Imagine the Lord
being aware
of all the prayers
and having to listen
to the sort of prayers
that go on every night.
God heard the embattled nation shout,
God strafe England
and God save the king.
God this, God that,
and God the other thing.
Good God said God,
I've got my work cut out.
So therefore,
when somebody in India
suddenly announces
that he's God,
nobody accuses him
of blasphemy
or of being insane.
They say simply,
congratulations,
at last you found out.
And they don't
immediately request
a miracle.
As you see,
if we get across
someone who says
I'm God
or I'm Jesus Christ,
they say what they said
to Jesus Christ
in the first place.
Command that this bread,
these stones,
be made bread.
And you know,
he used to wangle
out of it
by saying,
your wicked
and deceitful generation
seeketh after a sign
and there shall no sign
be given.
It's going the way
I want it to anyhow.
Only really and truly
there is not this idea
of God the technician,
but rather the power
of omnipotence
is not to be able
to do anything
but to be doing all things,
whatever it is
that's going on,
and spontaneously
without having to think
about it,
which is very clumsy.
Now then,
I must say something
about how then
this relates
to the life
of the Hindu.
Hindu divide life
into certain stages,
what are called
the ashramas.
The first is called
brahmacharya,
the second
grihasta,
and the third
vana prastha.
Brahmacharya
means the stage
of the student,
the apprenticeship.
Grihasta,
the stage
of the householder,
and vana prastha,
the stage
of the forest dweller.
This is related
to cultural history
of early India.
Before we have
agrarian communities,
we have a hunting culture
which is on the move.
In a hunting culture,
every male
knows the whole culture.
There is no division
of labor.
And the holy man
of the hunting culture
is of course
called a shaman.
A shaman
is a
realized man,
a man who knows
the inner secret.
He's seen through
the game.
And he finds it
by going away
alone into the forest
and
cutting himself off
from the tribe.
That is to say,
from social conditioning.
And he goes maybe
for a long period
into the forest
and comes back.
He's found out
who he is.
And he sure
isn't who he was
told he was.
But as hunting cultures
settle into agrarian
patterns of life,
what do they do?
They build a village.
And around the village
they set up
a stockade,
which is known
as the pale.
And the village
is always, of course,
standing at crossroads.
And there you get
in agrarian society
a division of labor.
And the division of labor
comprises four.
In medieval Europe
we call them
lords spiritual,
lords temporal,
commons,
and serfs.
In India
they are
Brahmins,
Kshatriya,
that means
fighters,
Vaishya,
merchants,
traders,
Shudra,
laborers.
So you've got
the priests,
the warriors,
the merchants,
and the laborers.
Division of labor.
The four sections of town.
So the four basic castes.
So when you are born,
you are born into a caste,
and your duty
as a grihasta
or householder
is to fulfill
your caste function
and to bring up a family.
When you've done that,
you go back to the forest,
back to the hunting culture,
and you drop your role,
and you become nobody,
a shaman again.
So a Hindu calls
one who does this
a shramana,
which is of course
the same word
as shaman,
and the Chinese
call him
a shiaman.
Shaman.
A shaman is an immortal.
Why immortal?
Because it's only the role
that's mortal.
The big front,
the persona.
The one who you really are,
the common man,
that is to say,
the man who is common
to us all,
which you could call
the son of man,
that's the real self.
That's the guy
who's putting on
the big act.
And of course,
he has no name.
Nobody can put
the finger on him
because you can't
touch the tip of the finger
with the tip of the finger.
So that means
in practice then
that when you hand over
your vocation
in life,
which is called
your svadharma,
that means sva,
that's the same
as the Latin
suus,
one's own.
Dharma means function.
Your own function,
or we would call
your vocation,
when you've completed it,
you drop out
and become nobody
because you're going
to find out now
who you really are.
You're no longer
Mr. Mukhopadhyaya,
who is a
class salesman.
you drop that name
and you take on
one of the names
of God,
Swami Brahmananda,
Swami Bliss of Brahman.
And you may go
quite naked
like the Shivite
holy men.
No clothes.
And they just
go out and wander
and don't make
any provision
for anything.
They literally
take no thought
for the morrow.
What you shall eat,
what you shall drink,
or wherewithal
they shall be clothed.
But you see,
people respect them.
They say,
yeah,
we've got to have
those people up there
because they are doing
what a human being
is ultimately supposed
to do
and we shall do it
in our turn
and so give them
some food.
Now,
naturally,
caste,
holy men,
and all that kind
of thing
can be exploited.
Anything can be
exploited
and abused.
And we can look
at it all
and say,
what a mess.
Why don't you
do something
for yourselves?
Why don't you
kill the sacred cows
and eat them?
Why don't you
clean up?
Why do you
permit all this disease?
Just try and see
something from another
point of view
for a change.
I'm not saying
that we should do
what the Hindus do,
but just look at it
from another point
of view.
And they would
smile at us
and say,
you really think
it's as real
as all that?
Have you never
experienced what's
on the inside
of this game?
See,
the trouble with
you Westerners
is you've never
experienced bliss.
You've never
got down
to the root
of reality.
You don't know
that state
of consciousness.
And so you're
frantically
trying to patch
everything up
and pin it
all together
and screw the
universe up
so it's fixed.
You can never
do it.
All it is
is going to
wildly rushing
around and
creating trouble.
Of course,
Western-educated
Hindus think
the same way.
They are now
for rushing
around and
patching India
up.
And what's
going to happen
is they're
going to arm
all the millions
of people in
India.
And they're
going to create
a lot of
trouble in Asia
one of these
days when they
become powerful
society.
Yeah?
Of course.
Yeah,
that's true,
you know.
Because of the
big fight with
the devil.
You see?
The war in
heaven, you
see?
Now, the funny
thing about
that is, when
you read
Milton's
Paradise Lost,
long before
Lucifer decided
to rebel, the
whole of
heaven was
armed.
And he
describes the
legions of
angels with
their escutcheons
and gonfalons
and military
deportment.
Who was
looking for
trouble?
Lucifer was a
good guy back
then, see?
The bearer of
light.
So the
Hindu looks at
our Christianity
and sort of
thinks, my
goodness, here
is the
eternal self.
But in the
idea of
Christianity, the
godhead is
having a
real far-out
one.
Because not
only is he
incarnating himself,
say, as some
wretched beggar, but
he's incarnated
himself as a
Christian soul who
believes that in
this one short
life he will
decide his
eternal destiny.
And the
possibilities of
making a mistake
are far greater
than of being a
lousy beggar.
the possibility
involved in the
Christian gamble
is to fry in
hell forever and
ever and ever
and ever.
Even the
Avicii hell at
the bottom of
the Naraka only
goes on for
about one
kalpa.
But the
everlasting
damnation, what
an idea.
So the
Hindu says,
bravo, you
know, God
has really done
a dare on
himself this
time to be a
Christian soul.


===== Philosophies Of Asia - 04 - Intro To Buddhism I =====

The idea of a yana or vehicle comes from the basic notion or image of Buddhism as a raft for crossing a river.
This shore is ordinary everyday consciousness, such as we have mainly the consciousness of being an ego
or a sensitive mind locked up inside a mortal body.
A consciousness of being you in particular and nobody else.
The other shore is release or nirvana, a word which means literally blow out.
As one says in heaving a sigh of relief, nirvana is never, never, never to be interpreted
as a state of extinction or a kind of consciousness in which you are absorbed into an infinitely formless, luminous ocean
which could best be described as purple jello, but luminous, you know, kind of spiritual horrors.
It isn't meant to be that at all.
Nirvana is, has certain, many senses, but the primary meaning of it is that it's this everyday life
just as we have it now, but seen and understood and felt in a very, very different way.
Buddhism is called in general a dharma and this word is often mistranslated as the law.
It's better translated as the doctrine and still better translated as the method.
And the dharma is formulated originally by the Buddha who was the son of a North Indian Raja
living very close to Nepal who was thriving shortly after 600 BC.
The word Buddha is a title, the proper name of this individual was Gotama Siddhartha, and the word
Buddha means the awakened one from the Sanskrit root buddh, B-U-D-H, which means to wake or to know.
So, so we could say Buddha means the man who woke up, and the, the Buddha was a very, very skillful psychologist.
He is in a way the first psycho-therapist in history, a man of tremendous understanding of the wiles and deviousnesses of the human mind.
Buddhism is made to be easily understood.
Everything is numbered so that you can remember it.
And the basis of Buddhism are what are called the four noble truths.
The first one is the truth about suffering.
The second, the truth about the cause of suffering.
The third, the truth about the ceasing of suffering.
And the fourth, the truth about the way to the ceasing of suffering.
So let's go back to the beginning, suffering.
The Sanskrit word is dukkha, D-U-H-K-H-A, dukkha.
It means suffering in the widest possible sense, but chronic suffering, chronic frustration, is probably as good a translation as any.
Chronic frustration.
And the Buddha, Buddhism says, the life of mankind and of animals, indeed also of angels, if you believe in angels, is characterized by chronic frustration.
And so that constitutes a problem.
If I, if anyone, if any one of you says, I have a problem, I don't suppose you would be here if you didn't in some way have a problem.
Well, that's dukkha.
Now, the next thing is the cause of it.
The cause of it is called Trishna.
T-R-I-S-H-N-A.
Trishna is a Sanskrit word that is the root of our word thirst.
First, thirst, but more exactly craving, or clutching, or desiring.
Because of craving, or of clutching, in us, we create suffering.
But in turn, this second truth includes that behind Trishna, there lies another thing called ignorance.
A-V-I-D-Y-A.
Non-vision.
You see, Vidya, Vid in Sanskrit, is the root of the Latin video, and of our vision.
And A-in front of the word is non.
As we say, atheist is a non-theist.
So, A-V-I-D-Y-A is not seeing.
Ignorance, or better, ignorance.
Because our mind, as it functions consciously, is a method of attending to different and particular areas of experience, one after another, one at a time.
When you focus your consciousness on a particular area, you ignore everything else.
That is why to know is at the same time to ignore.
And because of that, there arises Trishna or craving.
Why?
Because if you ignore what you really know, you come to imagine that you are separate from the rest of the universe, and that you are alone.
And therefore, you begin to crave, to thirst, for, you develop an anxiety to survive.
Because you think that if you are separate, if you are not the whole works, you are going to die.
Actually, you are not going to die at all.
You are simply going to stop doing one thing and start doing something else.
You know, when you die, in the ordinary way, you just stop doing this thing called Alan Watts.
But you do something else.
Later.
Later, man.
You know, like that.
And you...
And it is nothing to worry about at all.
Only if you are entirely locked up in the illusion that you are only this, then you begin to be frightened and anxious.
And that creates thirst.
So, if you can get rid of ignorance, ignorance, and widen your mind out, so as to see the other side of the picture,
then you can stop craving.
That doesn't mean to say you won't enjoy your dinner anymore.
And that it won't be nice to make love to girls or anything like that.
It doesn't mean that at all.
It means you are enjoying your dinner and making love and generally enjoying the senses and all the experience.
That only becomes an obstacle to you if you cling to that in order to save yourself.
But if you don't need to save yourself, you can enjoy life just as much as ever.
Uh, you don't have to be a Puritan.
So, then, uh, that state of letting go, instead of clinging to everything.
Supposing, you know, you are in business and you have to make money and, uh, keep a family supported or something like that, you know.
So, the thing is, do that.
But don't, don't, uh, let it get you down.
Do it what the Hindus call Nishkama Karma.
Nishkama means passionless karma activity.
And that means doing all the things that one would do in life.
One's business, one's occupation, etc, etc.
But doing it without taking it seriously.
Do it as a game.
And then everybody who depends on you will like it much better.
Because if you take it seriously, they'll be feeling guilty.
Because they'll say, oh dear, Papa absolutely knocks himself out to work for us, you see.
And they all get miserable.
And they go on, they, they live their lives out of a sense of duty.
Which is a dreadful thing to do.
So, uh, that's nirvana, you see.
To, to live in a let-go way.
Then the fourth noble truth describes the way, the method, of realizing nirvana.
And that's called the Noble Eightfold Path.
The Eightfold Path is a series of eight human activities, such as understanding or view, effort, vocation or occupation, speaking, conduct, etc.
And they're all prefaced by the Sanskrit word, samyak.
Uh, which is very difficult to translate.
Most people translate it right, in the sense of correct.
But, this is an incomplete translation.
The word sum, the root sum, in Sanskrit, is the same as our word sum, through the Latin summa.
And sum, of course, the sum of things means completion.
But, it also has the sense of balanced.
Or, middle-weighed.
Not W-E-I-G-H, but W-A-Y-E-D.
Middle-weighed.
Because Buddhism is called the middle way.
We'll find out a great deal about that later.
But, the thing that you must recognize is this.
Buddhism, although when you say, uh, write speech, in other words, don't tell lies.
Well, let me put it this way.
Every Buddhist, who, uh, belongs to the Theravada school, in the South, expresses the fact that
he is a Buddhist, by reciting a certain formula.
And it's called, Tisarana and Panchasila.
This is, I'm talking Pali now, not Sanskrit.
Tisarana means the three refuges, Panchasila, the five precepts.
And, put your hands together like this, and say,
Buddham Sarananga Chami
Dhamham Sarananga Chami
Sangham Sarananga Chami
That means, I take refuge in Buddha.
I take refuge in the method, the Dhamma.
I take refuge in the Sangha, which means the fraternity of the followers of Buddha.
And then, he goes on, and he takes the five precepts.
Pāna-ti-pāta-veramani
And this precepts, one after another, I promise to abstain from taking from life, taking life.
Adina-dhāna-veramani, I promise to abstain from taking what is not given.
Kamesu Mityahara, I promise to abstain from exploiting my passions.
Musavada-veramani, I promise to abstain from false speech.
Surah, Maryamaja, Pāna-dhāna, I promise to abstain from getting intoxicated by a list of various boozes.
Now, every Buddhist in the Southern School says, Mahayanists have a different formula.
Well, this is the method, and the method, the Dharma, is therefore a moral law.
Just like the Ten Commandments.
But it isn't.
It's nothing, it's quite different.
You see, you don't take the five precepts in obedience to a royal edict.
You take them upon yourself.
And there is a very special reason for doing so.
How can you fulfill the precept not to take life?
Every day you eat, even if you're a vegetarian, you must take life, and so on.
Now, therefore understand this, and this is absolutely fundamental to an understanding of Buddhism.
Buddhism is a method, it is not a doctrine.
Buddhism is a dialogue, and what it states at the beginning is not necessarily what it would state at the end.
The method of Buddhism is, first of all, a relationship between a teacher and a student.
The student creates the teacher by raising a problem, and going to someone about it.
You see?
Now, if he chooses wisely, you see, he'll find if there's a Buddha around to use as the teacher.
And then he says to the Buddha, my problem is that I suffer, and I want to escape from suffering.
So the Buddha replies, suffering is caused by desire, by Trishna, by craving.
If you can stop desiring, then you will solve your problem.
Go away and try to stop desiring.
And he gives him some methods, how to practice meditation, and to make his mind calm and still, to see if he can stop desiring.
The student goes away and practices this.
Then he comes back to the teacher and says, but I can't stop desiring not to desire.
What am I to do about that?
So the teacher says, try then to stop desiring not to desire.
Now, you can see where this is going to land up.
Or he might put it in this way.
All right, if you can't completely stop desiring, do a middle way.
That is to say, stop desiring as much as you can stop desiring.
And don't desire to stop any more desire than you can stop.
See how that's, see where that's going to go?
Because he keeps coming back.
Because what the teacher has done, in saying stop desiring, he has given his student what in Zen Buddhism is called a koan.
This is a Japanese word that means a meditation problem.
Or more strictly, it means the same thing as case means in law.
Because koans are usually based on anecdotes and incidents of the old masters, cases, precedents.
But koan, the function of a koan, is a challenge for meditation.
Well, who is it that desires not to desire?
Who is it that wants to escape from suffering?
And here we get to a methodological difference between Hinduism and Buddhism on the question of who are you?
The Hindu says, you, yourself, he calls Atman, A-T-M-A-N, the Self.
And he says now, strive to know the Self.
Realize, I am not my body because I can be aware of my body.
I am not my thoughts because I can be aware of my thoughts.
I am not my feelings for the same reason.
I am not my mind, etc., because I can be aware of it.
Therefore, I really am other than, above, transcending, all these finite aspects of me.
Now, the Buddhist has a critique of that.
He says, why do you try to escape from yourself as a body?
The reason is your body falls apart and you want to escape from it.
Why do you want to disidentify yourself from your emotions?
The reason is that your emotions are uncomfortable and you want to escape from them.
You don't want to have to be afraid.
You don't want to have to be in grief or anger.
And love, even, is too much, you see.
It involves you in suffering.
Because if you love someone, you have a hostage to fortune.
So, the Buddhist says, the reason why you believe you are the Atman, the eternal Self,
which in turn is the Brahman, the Self of the whole universe,
is that you don't want to lose your damn ego.
And if you can fix your ego and put it in the safe deposit box of the Lord,
you think you've still got yourself.
You haven't really let go.
So, the Buddhist, the Buddha said, there isn't any Atman.
He taught the doctrine of un-Atman, non-self.
Your ego is unreal.
And, as a matter of fact, there's nothing you can cling to.
No refuge, really.
Just let go, man.
There's no salvation, no safety, nothing anywhere, you see.
How clever that was.
You see?
Because what he was really saying is,
any Atman that you could cling to, or think about, or believe in,
wouldn't be the real one.
This is the accurate sense of the original documents of the Buddha's teaching.
If you carefully go through it, that's what he's saying.
He's not saying that there isn't the Atman, or the Brahman.
He says, anyone you could conceive wouldn't be it.
Anyone you believed in would be the wrong one.
Because believing is clinging, still.
There's no salvation through believing.
There's only salvation through knowledge.
And even then, the highest knowledge is non-knowledge.
And here he agrees with the Hindus, who say in the Upanishads, in the Kena Upanishad,
if you think that you know Brahman, you do not know him.
But if you know that you do not know the Brahman, you truly know.
Why?
Well, that's very simple.
If you really are it, you don't need to believe in it.
And you don't need to know it, just as your eyes don't need to look at themselves.
You see?
So, that's the difference of method in Buddhism.
Now, understand method here.
The method is a dialogue.
And the so-called teachings of Buddhism are the first opening gambits in the dialogue.
And when they say you cannot understand Buddhism out of books, the reason is that the books
only give you the opening gambits.
Then, having read the book, you have to go on with the method.
Now, you can go on with the method without a formal teacher.
That is to say, you can conduct the dialogue with yourself, or with life.
You have to explore and experiment on such things as, could one possibly not desire?
Could one possibly concentrate the mind perfectly?
Could one possibly do this, that, and the other?
And you have to work with it, you see?
So that you understand the later things that come after trying these experiments.
These later things are the heart of Buddhism.
So then, shortly after the Buddha's time, the practice of Buddhism continued as a tremendous
ongoing dialogue among the various followers.
And eventually, they established great universities, such as there was at a place called Nalanda
in northern India.
This discourse was going on, and if you looked at it superficially, you might think it was
nothing but an extremely intellectual bullsession, where philosophers were outwitting each other.
Actually, the process that was going on was this, that the teacher, or guru, in every case, was
examining students as to their beliefs and theories, and destroying their beliefs.
Showing that any belief that you would propose, any idea about yourself or about the universe
that you want to cling to, and make something of, used for a crutch, a prop, a security.
The teacher demolishes it.
This is how the dialogue works.
Until you are left with not a thing to hang on to.
Any religion you might propose, even atheism, they'll tear up.
Agnosticism, they'll destroy.
Any kind of belief, they're experts in demolition, so that they finally get you to the point where
you've got nothing left to hang on to.
Well, then you're free.
Because you're it, you see.
Once you're hanging on to things, you put it somewhere else, you see.
Something I can grab.
And even when you think as an idea, then I'm it, you're still hanging on to that,
they're going to knock that one down.
So when you are left without anything at all, you've, you've seen the point.
That's the method of the dialogue, essentially.
That is the Dharma.
And all Buddhists make jokes about that.
Buddha says in the Diamond Sutra, you see,
when I attained complete, perfect, unsurpassed awakening, I didn't attain anything.
Because it's like, to use a metaphor that is used in the scriptures,
it's like using an empty fist to deceive a child.
So, you know, you say to a child, what have I got here?
The child gets interested immediately and wants to find out.
You hide it, and the child climbs all over you, can't get at your fist.
And finally, you do let him get it, and there's nothing in it.
So I'm going to say, can you just use every day?
And I can use every minute.
That's what I'm putting in it.
I'm putting in it.
But no way, that's what I'm putting on it.
Now I'm putting it on the side of my show, I'm putting on it.
That's why, you know, I'm putting it on it.
And I'm putting it on and so forth to the conclusion of my skin.
So if I want you to try and make it on the side of my thumb,
Just, like, I'm putting it on the side of my mind.


===== Philosophies Of Asia - 05 - Intro To Buddhism II =====

Many of the problems that are now being discussed by modern logicians are unbeknownst to them already in the ancient Indian books.
Problems of semantics, problems of meaning, problems of the nature of time and of memory.
All these were discussed with very, very meticulous scholarly sophistication.
So that it is my opinion that this was a very, very fertile period of human history
and that the philosophy in which it eventually emerged, the philosophy of Mahayana Buddhism
is as yet the most mature and really intelligent theory of human life and of the cosmos that man has ever devised.
It is characteristic of this point of view that it adheres to the middle way.
And the middle way doesn't mean moderation.
It means the bringing together of opposites.
Of what we might call in our world, spirit and matter, mind and body, mysticism and sensuality,
unity and multiplicity, conformity and individualism.
All these things are marvelously wedded together in the world view of Mahayana.
And fundamental to Mahayana Buddhism is the idea of what is called the bodhisattva.
Bodhisattva means a person who has as his essence sattva, bodhi, awakening.
And it is usually used to mean a potential Buddha, someone who is, as it were, just about to become a Buddha.
That was the original sense.
And so part of the Pali Canon is a book called the Jataka Mala, the tales of the Buddha's previous lives.
How he behaved when he was an animal.
How he behaved when he was a man long before he became Buddha.
And in all these stories, he is represented as sacrificing himself for the benefit of other beings.
But since he had not yet become a fully fledged Buddha, he is called in these stories a bodhisattva.
That really means a potential Buddha.
But the point is that as a potential Buddha, as a bodhisattva, he is always involved in situations where he is feeding himself for the hungry tigers and so on.
Now in the course of time, the term bodhisattva underwent a transformation.
A bodhisattva matures and becomes a Buddha.
And what does that mean popularly?
It means that whoever is fully awakened to the way things are, is delivered from any necessity to be involved in the world anymore.
In other words, you can go on to a transcendent level of being where time is abolished, where all times are now, where there are no problems, where there is perpetual eternal peace.
Nirvana in the sense of the word parinirvana means beyond nirvana, super nirvana.
So that if you are fed up with this thing, and you don't want to play the game of hide and seek anymore, you can go in the parinirvana state and be in total serenity.
However, and again I am talking the language of popular Buddhism, a person who stands on the threshold of that peace, can turn back and say I won't be a Buddha, I'll be a bodhisattva.
I won't make the final attainment, because I would like to go back into the world of manifestation they call sangsara, go back into that world and work for their liberation.
So then, when a Mahayana Buddhist does his formula for puja, you know, he says,
Sentient beings are numberless, I take a vow to save them.
Deluding passions are inexhaustible, note this, inexhaustible, I take a vow to destroy them.
The gates of the method, the Dharma, are manifold, I take a vow to enter them.
The Buddha way is supreme, I take a vow to complete it.
All this is impossible.
You see, numberless sentient beings, because they are numberless, can never be delivered.
Deluding passions, which are inexhaustible, can never be eradicated.
So, this then, the Mahayanists, you know, they go,
Shujo muhen seigandho,
Vannomujin seigandhan,
Homanmuryo seigandhyaku,
Butzodomujo seigandhyo.
And, that's their formula.
The bodhisattva who returns into the world, and becomes involved again,
Is, in fact, regarded as a superior kind of being,
To the one who gets out of it.
The person who gets out of the rat race,
And enters into eternal peace,
Is called Pratyeka Buddha.
Which means private Buddha.
Buddha who does not teach,
Who does not help others.
And in Mahayana literature, that is almost a term of abuse.
Pratyeka Buddha.
Pratyeka Buddhas are classed with unbelievers, and heretics, and infidels, and fools.
But the great thing is the bodhisattva.
All beings are thought of, in popular Buddhism, as constantly reincarnating,
Again, and again, and again, and again, into the round of existence.
Helplessly, because they still desire.
They are therefore drawn back into the cycle.
The bodhisattva goes back into the cycle with his eyes wide open, voluntarily.
And allows himself to be sucked in.
And this is normally interpreted as an act of supreme compassion.
And bodhisattvas can assume any guise.
They can get furiously angry, if necessary.
In order to discourage evil beings.
Even could assume the role of a prostitute.
And live that way.
So as to deliver beings at that level of life.
Could become an animal.
Could become an insect.
Become a maggot.
Anything, you know.
All deliberately and in full consciousness.
To carry on the work of the deliverance of all beings.
Now that's the way the popular mind understands it.
And therefore the bodhisattvas are all revered and respected.
And worshipped.
And looked upon as gods.
As we look upon God in the west.
And as saviours as the Christian looks upon Jesus.
But underneath this myth.
There is a profound philosophical idea.
And that is this.
It goes back to the Hindu philosophy of Advaita.
And non-duality.
Namely.
The apparent dualism.
Of I and thou.
Of the knower and the known.
The subject and the object.
Is unreal.
And so also.
The apparent duality between.
Maya.
The world illusion.
And reality.
Is unreal.
The apparent duality.
Or difference between.
The enlightened and the ignorant person.
Is unreal.
So the apparent duality.
Of.
Bondage.
And deliverance.
Or liberation.
Is unreal.
The wise.
The perfectly wise man.
Is the one who realises.
Vividly.
That.
The ideal place.
Is the place where you are.
If this is an impossible thing.
To put in words.
The nearest I could get to it.
Would be to say.
That.
If you could see.
This moment.
That.
You need nothing beyond this moment.
Now.
Sitting here.
Irrespective of anything.
I might be saying to you.
Of any ideas.
You might have rattling around.
In your brains.
That.
Here.
And now.
Is.
The.
Absolute.
Witch.
Then which.
There is no witcher.
Only.
We.
We prevent ourselves.
From seeing this.
Because.
We're always saying.
Well.
There ought to be something more.
Am and I missing something.
Somehow.
See.
And nobody sees it.
Now.
Uh.
Then.
Also.
The.
Most.
Far out.
Form.
Of.
Mahayana.
Buddhism.
Is.
In.
Is.
Shinshu.
True.
Sect.
And.
Uh.
This.
Is.
Based on the idea.
That.
There was.
In.
Immeasurably.
Past.
Ages.
A.
Great.
Bodhisattva.
Called.
Amitabha.
And.
He made a vow.
That.
He would never.
Never.
Become a Buddha.
Unless.
Any.
Being.
Who.
Is.
The.
Pure.
Land.
Over.
Which.
He presides.
The.
Kind of.
Paradise.
He did.
Become a Buddha.
And.
So.
The.
Vow.
Works.
All.
You have to do.
Is.
To.
Repeat.
The name.
Amitabha.
And.
This.
Will.
Assure.
The.
Western.
Paradise.
You see.
Is.
Some.
Kind of.
A.
Level.
Of.
Consciousness.
It.
In.
And.
Wonderful.
Pictures.
Where.
The.
Buddha.
Amitabha.
Who.
Is.
A.
Related.
To.
Ahura.
Mazda.
And.
He.
Means.
Boundless.
Light.
In.
The.
In.
The.
Open.
Is.
Amitabha.
So.
There.
He.
Sits.
Surrounded.
With.
His.
Court.
And.
This.
Court.
Is.
Full.
Of.
Apsaras.
And.
Apsaras.
Are.
Beautiful.
Girls.
And.
There.
You.
Find.
Yourself.
Sitting.
Coming.
Out.
Of.
The.
Water.
And.
Here.
On.
The.
Clouds.
In.
Front.
Of.
You.
Are.
The.
Apsaras.
Sitting.
Strumming.
Their.
Lutes.
With.
The.
It.
This.
Fast.
The.
Said.
Any.
Many.
Times.
You see.
And.
So.
You.
're Quite.
You.
Okay.
ONG AS.
To see.
You.
More.
that anything good you try to do is done with a selfish motive
and therefore doesn't affect your deliverance
therefore the only way to get deliverance is to put faith
in the power of this Amitabha Buddha
and to accept it as a free gift
and to take it by doing the most absurd thing
saying Namo Amida Buttsi
don't even worry whether you have to have faith in this
because trying to have faith is also spiritual pride
it doesn't matter whether you have faith or whether you don't
the thing works anyway
so just say Namo Amida Butts
see
now that's the most popular form of Buddhism in Asia
the two most vast temples in Kyoto
the Inishi and Higashi Honganji temples
represent this sect
and everybody loves Amitabha
Amida they call him in Japan
boundless light
infinite Buddha of compassion
sitting there with this angelic expression on his face
it's alright boys
just say my name
it's all you have to do
so when we add together
prayer wheels
Namo Amida Buttsi
they call it Nembut
so that's the means of remembering Buddha
bookcases
and all these things
where you just have to
and the work is done for you
then wouldn't we westerners say
especially if we are protestants
oh what a scoundrelly thing that is
what an awful degradation of religion
what an avoidance of the moral challenge
and the effort and everything that is required
is this what the bodhisattva doctrine of infinite compassion
deteriorates into
now you see
there is a profound aspect to all that
just as the
there is the diamond and the ice
as we were talking about this morning
just as there is desperation and despair
nirvana
desperation and despair
of the horrors
so there are two ways of looking at this
nothing to do
no effort to make idea
depending completely on the saviour
for who is Amitabha
popularly Amitabha is somebody else
he is some great
compassionate being
who looks after you
esoterically
Amitabha is your own nature
Amitabha is your real self
the inmost boundless light
that is
the root and ground of your own consciousness
you don't need to do anything to be that
you are that
and saying Nembutsu's
is simply a symbolical way of pointing out
that you don't have to become this
you are it
and Nembutsu therefore
on its deeper side builds up
a special kind of sage
which they call Myokonin
Myokonin in Japanese means
a marvelous fine man
but the Myokonin is a special type of personality
who corresponds in the west to the holy fool
in Russian spirituality
or to something like the Franciscan
in Catholic spirituality
Myokonins
well I'll tell you some Myokonin stories
that's the best way to indicate their character
one day Myokonin was traveling
and he stopped in a Buddhist temple overnight
and he went up to the sanctuary
where they have all these big cushions
like here you know for the priest to sit on
and he arranged the cushions in a pile on the floor
and went to sleep on them
in the morning the priest came in
and saw this tramp sleeping
he said what are you doing here
desecrating the sanctuary
by sleeping on the cushions
and so on
right in front of the altar
and Myokonin looked at him in astonishment
and said
he said why you must be a stranger here
you can't belong to the family
in Japanese
when you want to say
that a thing is just the way it is
you call it sonomama
so there's a haiku poem which says
weeds in the rice field
cut them down
sonomama fertilizer
cut the weeds
leave them exactly where they are
and they become fertilizer
sonomama
and sonomama means reality
just the way it is
just like that
now there's an expression
a parallel expression
konomama
konomama means
I just as I am
just little me
you know like that
with no frills
no pretense
except that I naturally have some pretense
that's part of konomama
and the Myokonin is the man you see
who realizes that he
konomama
just as I am
am Buddha
am delivered by Amitabha
because Amitabha is my real nature
if you
if you really know that
you see
that makes you a Myokonin
but
but be aware of the fact
that you could entirely miss the point
and become a monkey instead
by saying I'm alright just as I am
and therefore I'm going to rub it in
and I'm going to be
going around
parading
my unregenerate nature
because this is Buddha too
you see
the fellow who does that
doesn't really know that it's okay
he's doing too much
he's coming on too strong
the other people
who
are always
beating themselves
they're doing the opposite error
you see
the middle way
right
down the center
is where you don't have to do a thing
to justify yourself
and you don't have to justify not justifying yourself
which is the mistake that most beatniks make
they justify not justifying themselves
and go too far
so you see there's something quite fascinating and tricky
in this doctrine
of the great bodhisattva Amitabha
who
saves you just as you are
who delivers you from bondage
just as you are
and you only have to say
Namo Amida Butch
fascinating
but that is the principle of Mahayana
and that is
you see
your acceptance of yourself
as you are
is the same thing as coming to live now
as you are
you see
now is as you are
in the moment
but you can't
come to now
and you can't accept yourself
on purpose
because the moment you do that
you're doing something unnecessary
you're doing a little bit more
that's what they call in Zen
legs on a snake
or a beard on a eunuch
you've overdone it
you see
how
can you
neither
do something about it
nor do nothing about it
as if that was something you had to do
you see
this is the same problem
as originally posed in Buddhism
how do you cease from desiring
because when I try to cease from desiring
I am desiring not to desire
you see this
all of this
is a
what is called upaya
or skillful device
to slow you down
so that
you can really be here
by seeing that there is nowhere else you can be
you don't have to come to now
where else can you be
it isn't
a task
it isn't a contest
what the Greeks called agon
agony
a contest
there is nowhere else to be
so they say
nirvana is no other than samsara
this shore is really the same as the other shore
it's not a
so if you look for this
lankavatara sutra says
if you look
to try and get nirvana in order to escape suffering
and being reborn
that's not nirvana at all


===== Philosophies Of Asia - 14 - Swallowing A Ball Of Hot Iron =====

The object of Buddhist discipline or methods of psychological training is, as it were, to
bring about a state of affairs in which the individual feels himself to be everything
that there is, the whole cosmos focused, expressing itself here.
Now, in that way, your sense of identity would be turned inside out.
You wouldn't forget who you were, you wouldn't forget your name and address, your telephone
number, your social security number, and what sort of role you're supposed to occupy
in society.
But you would know that this particular role that you play, this particular personality
that you are, is superficial, and the real you is all that there is.
And that inversion, turning upside down of the sense of identity, of the state of consciousness
which the average person has, is the objective of Buddhistic disciplines.
The method of teaching something in Buddhism is rather different from methods of teaching
which we use in the Western world.
In the Western world, a good teacher is regarded as someone who makes the subject matter easy
for the student, a person who explains things cleverly and clearly.
So you can take a course in mathematics without tears.
In the Oriental world, they have an almost exactly opposite conception, and that is that a good
teacher is a person who makes you find out something for yourself.
In other words, learn to swim by throwing the baby into the water.
There's a story used in Zen about how a burglar taught his child to burgle.
He took him one night on a burgling expedition and locked him up in a chest in the house that
he was burgling and left him.
And the poor little boy was all alone, locked up in the chest.
And he began to think, how on earth am I going to get out?
So he suddenly called out, fire, fire.
And everybody began running all over the place.
And they heard this shriek coming in from inside the chest and they unlocked it.
And he rushed out and shot out into the garden.
And just then, everybody was in hot pursuit, calling out thief, thief, and he went by a
well.
And he picked up a rock and dropped it in the well.
And everybody thought, the poor fellow has jumped into the well and committed suicide.
And he got away.
He got home and his father said, congratulations, you have learned the art.
So do you see, William Blake once said, a fool who persists in his folly will become wise.
And so the method of teaching used by these great Eastern teachers is to make fools persist
in their folly.
But very rigorously and very consistently and very hard.
So then, if I may, now having given you the analogy, the image, let's go to the specific
situation.
Supposing you want to study Buddhism under a Zen master, what will happen to you?
Well first of all, let's ask the question, why would you want to do this anyway?
It, I mean, I can make the situation fairly universal.
It might not be a Zen master that you go to.
It might be a Methodist minister.
It might be a Catholic priest.
It might be a psychoanalyst.
But what's the matter with you?
Why do you go?
And surely the reason that we all would be seekers is that we feel some disquiet about
ourselves.
Many of us want to get rid of ourselves.
We can't stand ourselves.
And so we watch television and go to the movies and read mystery stories and join churches in
order to forget ourselves.
In order to merge with something greater than ourselves.
We want to get away from this ridiculous thing locked up in a bag of skin.
So I have a problem.
I hurt.
I suffer.
I'm neurotic or whatever it is.
And one goes to the teacher and say, my problem's me.
Change me.
Now, if you go to a Zen teacher, he'll say, well, I have nothing to teach.
Change.
There is no problem.
Everything's perfectly clear.
And you think that one over.
And you say, he's probably being cagey.
He's testing me out.
To see if I really want to be his student.
So I know, according to everybody else who's been through this, that in order to get this
man to take me on, I must persist.
Do you know our saying, anybody who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.
That's a very, there's a double take in that saying, you see.
So in the same way, anybody who goes with a spiritual problem to a Zen master defines himself
as a nut, and the teacher does everything possible to make him as nutty as possible.
But the teacher says, quite honestly, I haven't anything to tell you.
I don't teach anything.
I have no doctrine.
As I said to you in the beginning of this talk, I have nothing whatsoever to sell you.
So the student thinks, this is very deep, because this nothing that he's talking about,
this nothing that he teaches, is what they call in Buddhism, Shunyata.
And Shunyata is the Sanskrit for nothingness.
But, and it's supposed to be the ultimate reality.
But as you know, if you know anything about these doctrines, this doesn't mean real nothingness.
Not kind of just nothing there at all, not just blank.
But it means no thingness.
It's the transcendental reality behind all separate and individual things.
And that's something very deep and profound.
So he knows that when the teacher said, I have nothing to teach, he meant this very esoteric, no thing.
Well, he might also say, then, if you have nothing to teach, what are all these students doing around here?
And the teacher says, they are not doing anything.
They're just, they're just a lot of stupid people who live here.
And he knows, again, you see, the stupid doesn't mean just straight stupid,
but the higher stupidity of being people who are humble and don't have intellectual pride.
So, finally, the student, having gone out of his way to define himself as a damn fool in need of help,
he's absolutely worked himself into this situation.
He's defined himself as a nut.
And then the teacher accepts him.
And the teacher says, now, I'm going to ask you a question.
I want to know who you are before your father and mother conceived you.
That is to say, you've come to me with a problem.
And you've said, I have a problem.
I want to get one up on this universe.
Now, who is it that wants to get one up?
I mean, who are you?
Who is this thing called your ego, your soul, your eye, your identity,
for whom your parents provided a body?
Show me that.
And he says, further, I'm from Missouri, and I don't want any words.
I want to be shown.
So, the student may open his mouth to make an answer,
but the teacher says, uh-uh, not yet.
You're not ready.
And he takes him back and introduces him to the chief student,
all those so-called Zen monks who live together.
And the chief student says, now, what we do here is so-and-so.
We have this discipline.
But the main part of the discipline is meditation.
And we all sit cross-legged in a row.
And we do that.
And you sit cross-legged, and you learn how to breathe and be still.
In other words, to do nothing.
But you mustn't go to sleep, and you mustn't get into a trance.
You have to stay wide awake, not thinking anything, but perfectly doing nothing.
And there's a monk walking down all the time with a flat stick, rather long, about so long.
And if you go to sleep, or if you get into a trance, or if you get dreamy, he hits you on the back.
So that you'll stay quite clear and wide awake, but still doing nothing.
And the idea is that out of this state of profoundly doing nothing,
you will be able to tell the teacher who you really are.
In other words, the question, who are you before your father and mother conceived you,
is a request for an act of perfect sincerity and spontaneity.
As if I were to say to you, look, will you be absolutely genuine with me?
No deception, please.
I want you to do something that expresses you without the slightest deception.
No more role acting, no more playing games with me.
I want to see you.
Now imagine, could you really be that honest with somebody else?
Especially a spiritual teacher.
And you know he looks right through you.
He sees all your secret thoughts.
And he knows the very second when you've been a little bit phony.
And that bugs you.
Just like the psychiatrist.
You're sitting in there discussing your problems with him and you start picking your nose.
And the psychiatrist suddenly says to you,
Is your finger comfortable there?
You like that?
And you know, you know, you know, your Freudian slip is showing.
What do fingers symbolize?
What do nostrils symbolize?
Oh, oh, oh, oh.
And then you quickly put your hand down.
And you say, oh, no, it's nothing.
It's nothing.
I was just picking my nose.
And the analyst says, oh, really?
Then why are you justifying it?
Why are you trying to explain it away?
He has you everywhere you turn, you see.
Well, that's the whole art of psychoanalysis.
And it's Zen.
It's the same thing.
In other words, when you're challenged to be perfectly genuine, it's like saying to a child,
Now, darling, come out here and play and don't be self-conscious.
Or it's like I would say to you, now, look, if you come here tonight at exactly midnight
and put your hands on this stage, you can wish and have granted any wish you want,
provided you don't think of a green elephant.
And so everybody will come, they'll put their hands here, and they will be very careful not
to think about a green elephant.
Well, now, do you see the point?
That everybody, if we transfer this to the dimension of spirituality, where the highest
ideal is to be unselfish, to let go of oneself, when you are trying to be unselfish, you're
doing it for a selfish reason.
You can't be unselfish by a decision of the will any more than you can decide not to think
of a green elephant.
There is a story about Confucius, who one day met Lao Tzu, who was a great Chinese philosopher.
And Lao Tzu said, sir, what is your system?
And Confucius said, it is charity and love of one's neighbor and elimination of self-interest.
Lao Tzu said, stuff and nonsense.
Your elimination of self is a positive manifestation of self.
Look at the universe.
The stars keep their order.
The trees and plants grow upwards without exception.
The waters flow.
Be like this.
All your nonsense about elimination of self is like beating a drum in search of a fugitive.
So in this way, these are all examples of the thing, the trickery, the master is playing on you.
You came to him with the idea in your mind that you are a separate, independent, isolated individual.
And what he is simply saying to you is, show me this individual.
I had a friend who was studying Zen in Japan, and he got pretty desperate to produce the answer of who he really is.
And on his way to an interview with the master to give an answer to the problem,
he noticed a very common sight in Japan, a big bullfrog sitting around in the garden.
And he swooped this bullfrog up in his hand and dropped it in the sleeve of his kimono.
And then he went into the master, and to give the answer of who he was, he suddenly produced the bullfrog.
And the master said, mm-mm, too intellectual.
In other words, this answer is too contrived.
It's too much like Zen.
You've been reading too many books.
It's not the genuine thing.
So, after a while, you see, what happens is this.
When the student finds that there is absolutely no way of being his true self,
not only is there no way of doing it,
there is also no way of doing it by not doing it.
You can't do it by doing something.
You can't do it by not doing something.
Let me, to make this clearer, put it into Christian terms.
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God.
Now, what are you going to do about that?
If you try very hard to love God, and you ask yourself, why am I doing this?
You'll find out you're doing it because you want to be on the side of the big battalions.
You want to be right.
After all, the Lord is the master of the universe, isn't he?
And if you don't love him, you're going to be in a pretty sad state.
So, you realize I'm loving him just because I'm afraid of what will happen to me if I don't.
Then you think, that's pretty lousy love, isn't it?
And you think, that's a bad motivation.
I wish I could change that.
I wish I could love the Lord out of a genuine heart.
But why do you want to change?
Uh-uh.
See, I realize that the reason I want to have a different kind of motive is that I've got the same motive.
So, I say, oh, heaven's sakes, God, I'm a mess, and will you help me out?
Then he reminds you, why are you doing that?
Now, you're just giving up, aren't you?
You're asking someone else to take over your problem.
So, you suddenly find, you see, you're stuck.
So, in this way, what is called the Zen problem, or koan, is likened to a person who swallowed a ball of red-hot iron.
He can't gulp it down, and he can't spit it out.
Or it's like a mosquito biting an iron bull.
It's the nature of a mosquito to bite, and it's the nature of an iron bull to be unbiteable.
And both go on doing their thing that is their nature.
And so, nothing can happen.
You realize, absolutely, you're up against it.
Absolutely no answer to this problem.
No way out.
Now, what does that mean?
If I can't do the right thing by doing, and if I can't do the right thing by not doing, what does it mean?
It means, of course, that I, who is said to do all this, am a hallucination.
There is no independent self to be produced.
There is no way at all of showing it.
It's because it isn't there.
So, you recover from the illusion.
You suddenly wake up and think, what a relief.
And they call that satori.
That's awakening, the first step in awakening.
Let me try and translate this.
When this kind of experience happens, you discover that what you are is no longer this sort of isolated center of action and experience locked up in your skin.
That, by being, the teacher has asked you to produce that thing, to show it to him genuine and naked, and you couldn't find it.
So, it isn't there.
And when you see clearly that it isn't there, you have a new sense of identity.
And you realize that what you are is, as I said, the whole world of nature doing this.
Now, that's a difficult thing for many Western people, because it suggests to them a kind of fatalism.
It suggests that the individual is nothing more than the puppet of cosmic forces.
So, in the same way, when your own inner sense of identity changes, from being the separate individual, to being what the entire cosmos is doing at this place,
you become not a puppet, but more truly and more expressively an individual than ever.
However, this is the same paradox, which the Christian knows, in the form, whosoever would save his soul shall lose it.
Now, I think that this is something of very great importance to the Western world today,
because we have developed an immensely powerful technology.
Today, we have stronger means of changing the physical universe than has ever existed before.
How are we going to use it?
There is a Chinese proverb that if the wrong man uses the right means, the right means work in the wrong way.
Let us assume that our technological knowledge is the right means.
What kind of people are going to use this knowledge?
Are they going to be people who hate nature and feel alienated from it?
Or people who love the physical world and feel that the physical world is their own personal body?
An extension, the whole physical universe, right out to the galaxies, is simply one's extended body.
Now, at the moment, the general attitude of our technologists who are exploring space is represented in the term the conquest of space.
And they are building enormous shell-like phallic objects to go into the sky.
And this is downright ridiculous.
Because who is going to get anywhere in a rocket?
You know, it takes a terrible long time even to get to the moon.
And it's going to take longer than anybody can live to get outside the solar system, just to begin with.
The proper way to study space is not with rockets, but with radio astronomy.
Instead of going, bang, you know, with a tough fist at the sky, become more sensitive.
Develop subtler senses.
That's radio astronomy.
And everything will come to you.
Be more open.
Be more receptive.
And eventually, you will develop an instrument that will examine a piece of rock on Mars with greater care than you could if you were holding it in your own hand.
Let it come to you.
But you see, this whole attitude of using technology as a method of fighting the world will succeed only in destroying the world.
As we are doing, with absurd and uninformed and short-sighted methods of getting rid of insect pests,
of forcing our fruit and tomatoes to grow, of stripping our hills of trees, and so on and so on,
thinking that all this is some kind of progress when actually it is turning everything into a junk heap.
It is said, you know, that Americans who are in the forefront of technological progress are materialists.
Nothing is further from the truth.
American culture is dedicated to the hatred of material and to its transformation into junk.
Look at Los Angeles.
Does it look as if it was made by people who loved material?
It's all made out of ticky-tacky, which is a combination of plaster of Paris, paper mache, and plastic glue, and comes in any flavor.
The important lesson, in other words, is technology and its powers must be handled by true materialists.
And true materialists are people who love material, who cherish wood, and stone, and wheat, and eggs, and animals, and above all, the earth.
And treat it with the reverence that is due to one's own body.
So, let's get started.


===== Philosophies Of Asia - 07 - Taoist Way I =====

The philosophy of the Tao is one of the two great principal components of Chinese thought.
There are, of course, quite a number of forms of Chinese philosophy,
but there are two great currents which have thoroughly moulded the culture of China,
and they are Taoism and Confucianism.
And they play a curious game with each other.
Let me start by saying something about Confucianism,
originating with Kung Fu Tzu, or Confucius,
who lived approximately a little after 630 BC.
He is often supposed to have been a contemporary of Lao Tzu,
who is the supposed founder of the Taoist way,
but it seems more likely that Lao Tzu lived later than 400,
according to most modern scholars.
Confucianism is not a religion.
Confucianism is a social ritual and a way of ordering society,
so much so that the first great Catholic missionary to China,
Matteo Ricci, who was a Jesuit,
found it perfectly consistent with his Catholicism
to participate in Confucian rituals,
because he saw them as something of a kind of national character,
as one might pay respect to the flag or something of that kind in our own times.
But he found that Confucianism involved no conflict with Catholicism,
no commitment to any belief or dogma
that would be at variance with the Catholic faith.
So Confucianism is an order of society
and involves ideas of human relations,
including the government and the family,
based on the principle of what is called in Chinese Ren,
although Jiafu will notice that I never get my tones right,
which is an extraordinarily interesting word.
I'm going to put some of these things on the whiteboard.
This is the word Ren in Chinese,
and it's often translated benevolence,
but that's not a good translation at all.
This word means human heartedness.
That's the nearest we can get to it in English.
And it was regarded by Confucius as the highest of all virtues,
but one that he always refused to define.
It's above righteousness and justice and propriety
and other great Confucian virtues.
And it involves the principle that human nature
is a fundamentally good arrangement,
including not only our virtuous side,
but also our passionate side,
and also our appetites and our waywardness.
The Hebrews have a term which they call the Yetzir Hara,
Y-E-Z-E-R-H-A-R-A,
which means the wayward inclination,
or what I like to call
the element of irreducible rascality,
that God put into all human beings.
And put it there because it was a good thing.
It was good for humans to have these two elements in them.
And so a truly human hearted person
is a gentleman
with a slight touch of rascality,
just as one has to have salt in a stew.
Confucius said,
the goody-goodies are the thieves of virtue,
meaning that to try to be wholly righteous
is to go beyond humanity,
to try to be something that isn't human.
So this gives Confucian approach to life
and justice and all those sort of things,
a kind of queer humor,
a sort of boys-will-be-boys attitude,
which is nevertheless
a very mature way
of handling human problems.
It was, of course, for this reason
that the Japanese Buddhist priests
who visited China to study Buddhism,
especially Zen priests,
introduced Confucianism into Japan.
Because, despite certain limitations
that Confucianism has,
and it needs,
it always needs the Tao philosophy
as a counterbalance,
Confucianism has been one of the most successful
philosophies in all history
for the regulation
of governmental and family relationships.
But, of course,
it is concerned with formality.
Confucianism prescribes
all kinds of formal relationships,
linguistic, ceremonial, musical,
in etiquette,
in all the spheres of morals.
And, for this reason,
has always been twitted
by the Taoists
for being unnatural.
You need these two components, you see,
and they play against each other
beautifully in Chinese society.
Roughly speaking, you see,
the Confucian way of life
is for people involved in the world.
The Taoist way of life
is for people who get disentangled.
Now, as we know,
in our own modern times,
there are various ways
of getting disentangled
from the regular lifestyle,
say, of the United States.
If you want to go through
the regular lifestyle
of the United States,
you go to high school and college,
and then you go into
a profession or a business.
And you own a standard house
and you raise a family
and you have a car or two cars
and do all that jazz.
But a lot of people
don't want to live that way.
And there are lots of other ways
of living besides that.
So you could say
that those of us
who go along with the pattern
correspond to the Confucians.
And those who are bohemians
or bums or beatniks
or whatever
and don't correspond
with the pattern,
they are more like the Taoists.
Because the Taoist is really
actually, in Chinese history,
Taoism is a way of life
for older people.
Lao Tzu,
the name given to
the founder of Taoism,
means the old boy.
And the legend is
that when he was born,
he already had a white beard.
So,
it's sort of like this,
that when you
have contributed to society,
when you've contributed children
and brought them up,
and you have assumed
a certain role
in social life,
you then say,
now it's time for me
to find out what it's all about.
Who am I ultimately
behind my outward personality?
What is the secret source of things?
And the latter half of life
is the preeminently excellent time
to find this out.
It's something to do
when you have finished
with the family business.
I am not saying
that that is
a sort of
unavoidable strict rule.
Of course,
one can study
the Tao
when very young
because it contains
all kinds of secrets
in it
as to the performance
of every kind
of art
or craft
or business
or any occupation
whatsoever.
But it does,
in China,
in a way,
it plays that
role
of a kind
of safety valve
for
the
more restricted
way of life
that Confucianism
prescribes.
And there is
a sort of
type
in China
who is known
as the old rogue.
He is
a sort of
intellectual bum
often found
among scholars
who is admired
very much
and who
a type
of character
which had
an enormous
influence
on the development
of the ideals
of Zen Buddhist
life.
He is one,
you see,
who goes
with nature
rather than
against nature.
Well,
now,
first of all,
I'm going to talk
about ideas
which come strictly
out of
Lao Tzu's book
The Tao Te Ching.
And,
of course,
the basic
thing
in the whole
philosophy
is the
conception
of Tao.
This word
has many
meanings
and the
book of Lao Tzu
starts out
by saying
that the Tao
which can be
spoken
is not
the eternal
Tao.
Or
you can,
there's a pun
in there
which you
can't quite
put into
English.
You can't
give all
the meanings
because the
word Tao
means
both
the way
or course
of nature
or of
everything
it also
means to
speak.
So,
the actual
opening phrase
of the book
following
this word
Tao
is this
and the
character
is repeated
again.
You see?
And this
character
means
can be
or can
able
something like
that.
So,
the way
which can
be
then
give it
its second
meaning
spoken
described
uttered
but it
also means
the way
that can
be
weighed
not
w-e-i-g-h
but
w-a-y-e-d
you know
you'd have
to invent
that word
the way
that can
be
traveled
perhaps
is not
the eternal
way.
In other
words
there is
no
way
in which
the Tao
or following
the Tao
can
there is
no recipe
for it.
I can't
give you
any
do-it-yourself
instructions
A B C D
as to
how it's
done.
It was
like when
Louis Armstrong
was asked
what is
jazz
he said
if you
have to
ask
you don't
know.
Now
that's
awkward
isn't
it?
But
we can
gather
what it
is
by
absorbing
certain
atmospheres
and
attitudes
connected
with those
who
follow
it
and
from
the
art
and
the
poetry
and
all
the
expressions
and
the
anecdotes
and
stories
that
illustrate
the
translated
Tao
as
the
Logos
taking
as
their
point
of
departure
the
opening
passage
of
St.
John's
Gospel
in the
beginning
was
the
word
now
if you
look up
a
Chinese
translation
of the
Bible
it
says
in the
beginning
was
the
Tao
and
the
Tao
was
with
God
and
the
Tao
was
God
the
same
was
in
the
beginning
with
God
all
things
were
made
by
it
and
without
it
was
not
anything
made
that
was
made
so
they
substituted
Tao
there
now
that
make
a
very
funny
effect
on
a
Chinese
philosopher
because
the
idea
of
things
being
made
by
the
Tao
is
absurd
the
Tao
is
not
a
manufacturer
and
it's
not
a
governor
it
doesn't
rule
as
it
were
in
the
position
of
a
king
although
the
book
the
Tao
de
Jing
is
written
for
many
purposes
but
one
of
its
important
purposes
is
as
a
manual
of
guidance
for
a
ruler
and
what
it
tells
him
is
essentially
rule
by
not
ruling
don't
lord it
over
the
people
and
so
he
says
the
great
Tao
flows
everywhere
both
to the
left
and
to
the
right
it
loves
and
nourishes
all
things
but
does
not
lord
it
over
them
and
when
good
things
are
it
lays
no
claim
to
them
in
other
words
the Tao
doesn't
stand up
and say
I have
made
all of
you
I have
filled
this earth
with its
beauty
and glory
fall down
before me
and worship
the Tao
having
having done
anything
you know
always
escapes
and
is not
around
to
receive
any
thanks
or
acknowledgement
because
it
loves
obscurity
and
Lao Tzu
said
the Tao
is like
water
it
always
seeks
the low
level
which
human
beings
abhor
so
it's a
very
mysterious
idea
Tao
then
is not
really
equivalent
with any
western
or Hindu
idea
of God
because
God
is always
associated
with being
the Lord
even in
India
the Brahman
is often
called
the Supreme
Lord
although that
was the term
more strictly
applicable to
Ishvara
the
manifestation
of Brahman
in the
form of
a personal
God
but
Bhagavan
the Lord
Krishna
his
song
is the
Bhagavad Gita
the song
of the
Lord
there's
always
the idea
of the
king
and the
ruler
attached
but not
in the
Chinese
Tao
philosophy
the
Tao
is not
something
different
from
nature
from
ourselves
from
our
surrounding
trees
and
waters
and
air
the
Tao
is
the
way
all
that
behaves
and
so
the
Chinese
the
basic
Chinese
idea
of
the
universe
is
really
that
it's
an
organism
and
as
we
shall
see
when
we
get
on
to
Zhuangzi
who
is
operating
together
so
that
nowhere
can
you
find
the
controlling
center
there
isn't
any
the
world
is
a
system
of
interrelated
components
none
of which
can
survive
without
each
other
just
as
in
the
case
of
bees
and
flowers
you
will
never
find
bees
around
in a
place
where
there
aren't
flowers
and
you
will
never
find
flowers
around
in
secretly
is
that
although
bees
and
flowers
look
different
from
each
other
they're
inseparable
they
to use
a very
important
Taoist
expression
they
arise
mutually
this
is
one
of the
great
phrases
from
the
second
chapter
of
Lao Tzu's
book
where
he
says
this
character
means
to
have
or
to
be
and
this
next
one
is
a
very
important
character
in Taoist
philosophy
it
means
no
negative
wu
in
Chinese
not
to
be
and
then
this
curious
expression
which
we
don't
have
a
really
good
corresponding
idea
in
traditional
western
thought
so
to
be
and
not
to
be
mutually
arise
this
character
is
based
on
the
picture
of a
plant
something
that
grows
out
of
the
ground
so
you
could
say
positive
and
negative
to
be
and
not
to
be
yes
and
no
light
and
dark
arise
mutually
come
into
being
there's
none
is
cause
and
effect
it's
not
that
relationship
at
all
it's
like
the
in
the
same
way
as
high
and
low
back
and
front
long
and
short
loud
and
soft
all
those
experiences
are
experienceable
only
in terms
of their
polar
experience
so
the
Chinese
idea
of
nature
is
that
all
the
various
species
arise
mutually
because
they
interdepend
and
this
total
system
of
interdependence
is
the
Tao
it
involves
certain
other
things
that
go
along
with
Tao
but
this
is
this
mutual
arising
is
the
key
idea
to
the
whole
thing
and
it
is
if
you
want
to
understand
Chinese
and
oriental
thought
in
general
it
is
the
most
important
thing
to
grasp
because
you
see
we
think
so
much
in
terms
of
cause
and
effect
we
think
of
the
universe
today
in
Aristotelian
and
Newtonian
ways
and
in
that
philosophy
the
world
is
all
separated
it's
like
a
huge
amalgamation
of
billiard
balls
and
they
don't
move
until
struck
by
another
or
by
a
cue
and
so
everything
is
going
tock
another
in
a
mechanical
way
but
of
course
from
the
standpoint
of
twentieth
century
science
we
know
perfectly
well
now
that
that's
not
the
way
it
works
we
know
enough
about
relationships
to see
that
mechanical
model
which
Newton
devised
was
all
right
for
certain
purposes
but
it
breaks
down
now
because
we
understand
relativity
and
we
see
how
things
go
together
in
a
kind
of
connected
net
rather
than
a
chain
of
billiard
balls
banging
each
other
around
so
in
the
philosophy
of
the
Tao
it
is
said
it's
always
being
said
this
is
you
read
this
in
every
art
book
about
Chinese
art
that
in
Chinese
painting
man
is
always
seen
as
in
nature
rather
than
dominating
it
you
get
a
painting
entitled
Poet
Drinking
by
Moonlight
and
you
see
a
great
landscape
and
after
some
search
with
a
magnifying
glass
at
last
you
see
the
poet
stuck
away
in a
corner
somewhere
drinking
wine
whereas
if we
painted
the
subject
poet
drinking
by
moonlight
the
poet
would
be
the
most
obvious
thing
in
a
picture
there
he
would
be
dominating
the
whole
thing
the
landscape
off
somewhere
behind
him
but
all the
Chinese
painters
put
man
I
mean
the
painters
of the
great
classical
tradition
there
are
Chinese
painters
who
specialize
in
family
portraits
and do
these
very
formal
paintings
of
someone's
ancestor
sitting
on a
throne
it's
quite a
different
category
but the
Taoist
inspired
painters
Zen
inspired
painters
have this
view of man
as an integral
part of
nature
something
in it
just as
everything else
is in it
flowers
and birds
and not
there
sent into
this world
and farm
it
and dominate
it
so then
the whole
conception
of nature
is as a
self-regulating
self-governing
indeed democratic
organism
but it has
a totality
it all
goes together
and this
totality
is the Tao
so then
we move
to a second
term
that is
extremely
important
the
expression
zi ran
is the
term
that we
translate
nature
when we
translate
Chinese
but this
term
expresses
this whole
point of
view
it doesn't
say
nature
natura
which means
in a way
class of
things
it means
literally
self
so
what is
so
of itself
what happens
of itself
and thus
spontaneity
and in the
Tao Te Ching
early on
Lao Tzu
says
the Tao's
method
is
to be so
of itself
now
we might
translate that
automatic
were it not
that the word
automatic
has a mechanical
flavor
zi ran
as this is called
or shizan
in Japanese
means
spontaneous
yes
it happens
as your
heart beats
you don't do
anything about it
you don't force
your heart to beat
you don't make it
beat
it does it
by itself
now figure a world
in which everything
happens by itself
it doesn't have to be
controlled
it's allowed
whereas you might
say
the idea
of God
involves
the control
of everything
going on
the idea
of the Tao
is the ruler
who abdicates
and lets all the
people
trusts all the
people
to conduct
their own
affairs
to let it
all happen
so
this doesn't
mean you see
that there isn't
a unified
organism
and everything
is in chaos
it means
that the more
liberty you give
the more love
you give
the more you
allow things
in yourself
and in your
surroundings
to take place
the more order
you will have


===== Philosophies Of Asia - 16 - Taoist Way Of Karma =====

This is Audible.
Welcome to another talk from the Alan Watts Radio Series No. 2,
Eastern Thought in the Modern World.
This is the first part of a program recorded in 1965
at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California.
Here, Alan Watts delivers a brilliant discussion of the Hindu concept of karma
and the Taoist easy way to escape it through cleverness, not muscle.
From Hindu and Christian perspectives,
to Gurdjieff, Buddhism, T.S. Eliot, and the Zen pebble in the pond,
he reveals the way to see into the Tao without hesitation.
It's part one of The Taoist Way.
Here's Alan Watts.
It is believed generally in India
that when a person sets out on the way of liberation,
his first problem is to become free from his past karma.
The popular theory of karma,
the word that literally means action or doing in Sanskrit,
so that when we say that something that happens to you is your karma,
it's like saying in English, it's your own doing.
Karma is a sort of built-in moral law or a law of retribution
such that all the bad things you do and all the good things you do
have consequences which you have to inherit.
And so long as karmic energy remains stored up,
all the bad things you do and all the good things you do
have consequences which you have to inherit.
And so long as karmic energy remains stored up,
you have to work it out.
And what the sage endeavors to do is a kind of action
which in Sanskrit is called nishkama karma.
Nishkama means without passion or without attachment,
karma, action.
And so whatever action he does,
he renounces the fruits of the action
so that he acts in a way that doesn't generate future karma
because future karma continues you
in the wheel of becoming,
samsara, the round,
and keeps you being reincarnated.
Now then, in that case,
when the time comes that you start
to get out of the chain of karma,
all the creditors that you have
start presenting themselves for payment.
In other words,
a person who begins, say, to study yoga
is felt that he will suddenly get sick
or that his children will die
or that he loses money
or all sorts of catastrophes will occur.
Because the karmic debt is being cleared up.
And there's no hurry to be cleared up
if you're just living along like anybody.
But if you embark on the spiritual life,
a certain hurry occurs.
And therefore, since this is known,
it's rather discouraging to start these things.
The Christian way of saying the same thing
is that if you plan to be,
to change your life,
shall we say,
to turn over a new leaf,
you mustn't let the devil know
because he will oppose you
with all his might
if he suddenly discovers
that you're going to escape from his power.
So, for example,
if you have a bad habit,
say you drink too much,
and you make a New Year's resolution
that during this coming year
you will stop drinking.
That's a very, very dangerous thing to do
because the devil will immediately know about it.
And what will happen will be this.
He will confront you
with the prospect of 365 drinkless days.
And that will be awful,
you know,
just overwhelming.
And you won't be able to make
much more than three days on the wagon.
So, in that case,
you compromise with the devil
and say,
just today I'm not going to drink,
you see,
but tomorrow maybe,
you know,
we'll go back.
Then when tomorrow comes,
you say,
oh, just another day,
let's try out,
that's all.
And the next day you say,
oh, one more day
won't make much difference.
So you only do it for the moment,
and you don't let the devil know
that you have a secret intention
of going on day after day
after day after day.
But, of course,
there's something still better than that.
And that is not to let the devil know anything.
And that means, of course,
not to let yourself know.
One of the many meanings of that saying,
let not your left hand know
what your right hand do,
if it's just this.
And that was why,
in the Zen discipline,
a great deal of it
centers around
acting without premeditation.
As those of you know
who read Herigl's book,
Zen in the Art of Archery,
it was necessary to release the bowstring
without first saying,
now.
There's a wonderful story
who may also have read
by a German writer
von Kleist
about a boxing match
with a bear.
The man can never defeat this bear
because the bear
always knows
his plans in advance
and is ready
to deal with any situation.
The only way
to get through to the bear
would be to hit the bear
without having first intended
to do so.
That would catch him.
And so this is one of the
great, great problems
in
the spiritual
life
or whatever you want to call it
is to be able
to have intention
and act
simultaneous.
By this means
you escape karma
and you escape the devil.
So
you might say
that the Taoist
is exemplary
in this respect.
that this is
getting free
from karma
without
making any
previous announcement
of simply
supposing we have
a train
and we want to
unload the train
of its
freight cars
you can go
to the back end
and you can
unload them
one by one
and shunt them
into the sliding
but the simplest
of all ways
of unloading
is to uncouple
between the engine
and the first car
and that gets rid
of the whole bunch
at once.
And it is in that
sort of way
you see
that the Taoist
gets rid of karma
without challenging it.
And so
it has the reputation
you see
of being
the easy way.
There are all kinds
of yogas
and ways
for people
who want to be difficult.
And one of the
great
gambits
of a man
like
Gurdjieff
was to
make it all
seem as difficult
as possible
because that
challenged the
vanity
of his students.
If some
teacher
some guru
says really
this isn't
difficult at all
it's perfectly
easy
some people
will say
oh
he's not
really
the real
thing
we want
something
tough
and difficult
and that
when we see
somebody
starts out
giving you
a discipline
that's very
very weird
and rigid
people think
now there
is the thing
that man
means business
see
and so
they flatter
themselves
by going
to such
a guy
that they
are
serious
students
whereas the
other people
are only
dabblers
and so on
alright
if you have
to do it
that way
that's the way
you have to
do it
but
the Taoist
is the kind
of person
who shows
you the
shortcut
and shows
you how
to do it
by intelligence
rather than
effort
because that's
what it is
Taoism
is in that
sense
what everybody
is looking
for
the easy
way in
the shortcut
using
cleverness
instead of
muscle
so the
question
naturally
arises
isn't it
cheating
when in
any game
somebody
really starts
using his
intelligence
he will
very likely
be accused
of cheating
and to
draw the
line
between
skill
and cheating
is a very
difficult thing
to do
you see
the inferior
intelligence
will always
accuse
the superior
intelligence
of cheating
that's its
way of
saving face
you beat
me by
means that
weren't
fair
we were
originally
having a
contest to
find out
who had
the strongest
muscles
and you
know we
were pushing
against it
like this
this
and this
would prove
who had
the strongest
muscles
but then you
introduce some
gimmick into it
some judo trick
or something like
that you see
and you're not
playing fair
so in the
whole domain
of
ways of
liberation
roots for the
stupid people
and roots for the
intelligent people
and the latter
are faster
this was
perfectly
clearly
explained by
Huinang
the sixth
patriarch of
Zen in
China
in his
sutra
where he
says the
difference
between the
gradual
school
and the
sudden
school
is that
they both
arrive at the
same point
but the
gradual is for
slow-witted
people
and the
sudden
is for
fast-witted
people
can you
in other
words
find a
way
that
sees
into
your own
nature
that
sees
into
the
Tao
immediately
and at
the end
of this
morning's
talk
I
pointed
out
to you
the
immediate
way
the
way
through
now
when you
know
that
this
moment
is the
Tao
and this
moment
is by
it's
considered
Tao
neither
coming
into
being
nor
going
out
of
being
there
is
nirvana
and there
is a
whole
Chinese
philosophy
of time
based
on this
it
hasn't
to my
knowledge
been very
much
discussed
by Taoist
writers
it's been
more
discussed
by
Buddhist
writers
but it's
all based
on the
same
thing
Dogen
the
great
13th
century
Japanese
Zen
Buddhist
studied
in
China
and he
wrote a
book
called
Shobo
Genzo
a
Roshi
recently
said to
me
in
Japan
that's
a
terrible
book
because
it
tells
you
everything
it
gives
the
whole
secret
away
but
in
the
course
of
this
book
he
says
you
don't
there
is
no
such
thing
as
a
progression
in
time
the
spring
does
not
become
the
summer
there
is
first
spring
and
then
there
is
summer
so
in
the
same
way
you
now
do
not
become
you
later
this
is
T.S.
Eliot's
idea
in
Four
Quartets
where
he
says
that
the
person
who
has
settled
down
in
the
train
to
read
the
newspaper
is
not
the
same
person
who
stepped
onto
the
train
from
the
platform
and
therefore
also
you
who
sit
here
are
not
the
same
people
who
came
in
at
the
door
these
states
are
separate
each
in
its
own
place
there
was
the
coming
in
at
the
door
person
but
there
is
actually
only
the
here
and
now
sitting
person
and
the
person
sitting
here
and
now
is
not
the
person
as
illusory
in
its
own
way
as
the
upward
movement
of
the
red
lines
on
a
revolving
barber
pole
you know
it
goes
round
and
round
and
round
and
the
whole
thing
seems
to be
going
up
or
going
down
whichever
the
case
may
be
but
actually
nothing
is
going
up
or
down
so
when
you
throw
a
pebble
into
the
pond
and
you
make
a
concentric
rings
of
waves
there
is
an
illusion
that
the
water
is
flowing
outwards
and
no
water
is
flowing
outwards
at
all
water
is
only
going
up
and
the
buddhist
say
suffering
exists
but
no
one
who
suffers
deeds
exist
but
no
doers
are
found
a
path
there
is
but
no
one
who
follows
it
and
nirvana
is
but
no
one
who
attains
it
in
this
way
they
look
upon
the
continuity
of
life
as
the
same
sort
of
illusion
that
is
produced
when
you
take
a
cigarette
and
the
illusion
of
the
circle
is
created
whereas
there
is
only
the
one
point
of
fire
the
argument
then
is
so
long
as
you're
in
the
present
there
aren't
any
problems
the
problems
exist
only
when
you
allow
presents
to
amalgamate
there's
a way
of putting
this
in
Chinese
which
is
rather
interesting
they
have
a
pronounced
nyon
in
Japanese
nin
and
the
top
part
of
the
character
means
now
and
the
bottom
part
means
the
mind
heart
the
shin
and
so
this
is
as
it
were
an
instant
of
thought
in
Sanskrit
they
use
it
they
use
this
character
as
the
equivalent
for
the
Sanskrit
word
shana
then
if
you
put
if
you
double
this
character
put
it
twice
three
times
and
I'll
write
the
Chinese
for
ditto
nyan
means
thought
after
thought
after
thought
now
the
Zen
master
Joshu
was
once
asked
what
is
the
mind
of
a
child
and
he
said
a
ball
in
a
mountain
stream
what
do
you
mean
by
a
ball
in
a
mountain
stream
he
said
thought
after
thought
after
thought
with
no
block
so
he
was
using
of
course
the
mind
of
the
child
as
the
innocent
mind
the
mind
of
a
person
who's
enlightened
one
thought
follows
another
without
hesitation
the
thought
arises
it
doesn't
wait
to
arise
as
when
you
clap
your
hands
the
sound
issues
without
hesitation
when
you
strike
flint
the spark
comes
out
it
doesn't
wait
to
come
out
and
that
means
that
there's
no
block
thought
nyan nyan nyan
describes what we call in our world the stream of consciousness
blocking
consists
in letting
the
the stream
become
connected
chained
together
in such a way
that when the present thought arises
it seems to be dragging its past
or
resisting its future
saying
I don't want to go
when
when then
the
connection
the dragging
it's better to call it
of these
thoughts
drops
you've broken the chain of karma
if you think of this
in comparison with certain problems in music
it's very interesting
because when we listen to music
we hear melody
only because we remember the sequence
we hear the intervals between the tones
but more than that
we
remember
the tones that led up to the one we are now hearing
and we are trained musically to anticipate certain consequences
and
to the extent that we get the consequences we anticipate
we feel that we understand the music
but to the extent that the composer does not adhere
to the rules
and gives us unexpected consequences
we feel that we don't understand the music
and if he gives us harmonic relationships
which we are not trained to accept
that is to say to expect
we say well this man is just writing garbage
but of course it becomes apparent
that the
perception of music
the ability to hear melody
will depend upon
a relationship
between past, present and future sounds
and you might say
well you're talking about a way of living
that would be equivalent
to listening
to music
with a tone deaf mind
so that you would reduce
you would eliminate the melody
and have only noise
and so in your Taoist way of life
you would eliminate
all meaning
and have only
senseless present moments
up to a point that's true
that is in a way
what Buddhists
and also mean
by seeing things
in their suchness
what is so bad about dying
for example
it's really no problem
when you die
you just drop there
that's all there is to it
but what makes it a problem
is that you're dragging a past
all those things you've done
all those achievements you've made
all these relationships
and people
that you've accumulated
as your friends
all that has to go
see it isn't here now
I mean a few friends
might be around you
but all that past
that identifies you
as who you are
which is simply memory
all that has to go
and we feel just terrible
about that
but if we didn't
if we were just dying
that's all
death wouldn't be a problem
so likewise
the chores
of everyday life
they become intolerable
when everything
ties together
all the past
and the future
you feel it dragging
at you every way
supposing you wake up
in the morning
and it's a lovely morning
let's take today
right here and now
here we are
in this paradise
of the place
big sir
and some of us
have got to go to work
on Monday
is that a problem
for many people it is
it spoils the taste
of what's going on now
when we wake up in bed
on Monday morning
and think of the various
hurdles we've got to jump
that day
immediately we feel
sad
whereas actually
we're just lying in bed
so the Taoist trick says
simply live now
and there will be no problems
that's the meaning
of the Zen saying
when you
are hungry
eat
when you are tired
sleep
when you walk
walk
when you sit
sit
Rinzai
the great
Tang Dynasty
master said
in the practice
of Buddhism
there is no place
for using effort
sleep when you are tired
move your bowels
eat when you are hungry
that's all
the ignorant
will laugh at me
but the wise
will understand
and so
also
the meaning
of this wonderful
Zen saying
of the character
for the sun
day
that is
every day
is a good day
on condition
that
day day
is like
nyan nyan
they come
one after another
and yet
there is only this one
you don't link them
this
as I
intimated
just a moment ago
seems to be
an atomization
of life
things
just do what they do
the flower goes
poof
and people go this way
go that way
and so on
and that's
that's
that's what's happening
it has no meaning
it has no destination
it has no value
it's just like that
and when you see that
you see
it's a great relief
that's all it is
but then
when you are firmly
established in suchness
in that it's just
this moment
you can begin again
to play with the connections
only
you've seen through them
but now you see
they don't haunt you
because you know
that there isn't any
continuous you
running on
from moment to moment
who originated
at some time in the past
and will die
at some time in the future
all that's disappeared
so you can have
enormous fun
anticipating the future
remembering the past
and
playing
all kinds of
continuities
this is the meaning
of that famous
zen saying
about
mountains
are mountains
to the naive man
mountains are mountains
waters are waters
to the intermediate student
mountains are no longer mountains
waters are no longer waters
in other words
they've all dissolved
into the point instant
to the kshana
but for the
fully perfected student
mountains are again mountains
and waters are again waters
you've been listening to
taoist way
part one
with alan watts
from the alan watts radio series
number two
eastern thought
in the modern world
the love of wisdom
with alan watts
is produced by
the electronic university
i'm neil harvey
thank you for listening
audible hopes you have enjoyed
this program
thank you for listening to
the


===== Philosophies Of Asia - 09 - Taoist Way III =====

In the philosophy of the Tao, it is said, it's always being said, this is, you read this
in every art book about Chinese art, that in Chinese painting, man is always seen as
in nature, rather than dominating it.
You get a painting entitled, Poet Drinking by Moonlight, and you see a great landscape,
and after some search with a magnifying glass, at last you see the poet stuck away in a corner
somewhere, drinking wine.
Whereas if we painted the subject, Poet Drinking by Moonlight, the poet would be the most obvious
thing in the picture.
There he would be, dominating the whole thing, and the landscape off somewhere behind him.
But all the Chinese painters put man, I mean, the painters of the great classical tradition,
there are Chinese painters who specialize in family portraits, and do these very formal
paintings of someone's ancestor sitting on a throne.
It's quite a different category.
But the Taoist-inspired painters, Zen-inspired painters, have this view of man as an integral
part of nature, something in it, just as everything else is in it, flowers, and birds, and not
there, sent into this world, commissioned by some sort of supernatural being to come into
this world and farm it, and dominate it.
The whole conception of nature is as a self-regulating, self-governing, indeed democratic organism.
But it has a totality.
It all goes together, and this totality is the Tao.
When we speak in Taoism of following the course of nature, following the way, what it means
is more like this.
Doing things in accordance with the grain.
It doesn't mean you don't cut wood, but it means that you cut wood along the lines where
the wood is most easy to cut, and you interact with other people along lines which are the
most genial, and this, then, is the great fundamental principle, which is called Wu Wei, not to force anything.
I think that's the best translation.
It's often called not doing, not acting, not interfering, but not to force.
Seems to me to hit the nail on the head.
Like, don't ever force a lock, or you bend the key or break the lock.
You jiggle until it revolves.
So, Wu Wei is always to act in accordance with the pattern of things as they exist.
Don't impose on any situation a kind of interference that is not really in accordance with the situation.
For example, we have a slum, and the people are in difficulty and so on, and they need better housing.
Now, if you go in with a bulldozer and knock the slum down, and you put in its place some architect's imaginative notions
of what is a super-efficient high-rise apartment building to store people, you create total mess, utter chaos.
Islam has what we would call an ecology.
It has a very complex system of relationships going in it, by which the thing is already a going concern,
even though it isn't going very well.
Anybody who wants to alter that situation must, first of all, become sensitive.
To all the conditions and relationships going on there, it's terribly important, then, to have this feeling
of the interdependence of every form of life upon every other form of life.
How we, for example, cultivate animals that we eat, look after them and build them up,
and see that they breed in reasonable quantities.
We don't do it too well, as a matter of fact, especially troubles arising about supplies of fish in the ocean.
All sorts of things.
But you have to see that life, that the so-called conflict of various species with each other,
is not actually a competition.
It's a very strange system of interrelationship.
Of things feeding on each other and cultivating each other at the same time.
The idea of the friendly enemy, the necessary adversary, who is part of you.
You have conflicts going on in your own body.
All kinds of microorganisms are eating each other up.
And if that wasn't happening, you wouldn't be healthy.
So all those interrelationships, whether they appear to be friendly relationships, as between bees and flowers,
or conflicting relationships, as between birds and worms,
they are actually forms of cooperation.
And that is mutual arising.
You have to understand this as the basis.
Apply this, not forcing anything, and you get spontaneity.
A life which is so of itself, which is natural,
which is not forced, which is not unduly self-conscious.
Now, another term that is important,
although I'm not aware that this word occurs in Lao Tzu's book,
it's found in greater use at a much later time in Chinese thought,
in a philosophy that is called Neo-Confucian.
And it's also used in Buddhism.
But it is a very useful word for understanding
the sort of order that all this constitutes.
It's the word Li.
And this means,
originally,
the markings in jade,
or perhaps the grain in wood,
or the fiber in muscle.
It is translated nowadays,
in most dictionaries,
as reason,
or principle.
But this isn't a very good translation.
Joseph Needham suggested that
organic pattern
was an ideal translation for this word.
Now, you see,
the markings in jade
are always regarded as beautiful.
You might say,
if you look down at the water here,
when you see the waves break,
there are patterns in the foam.
Now, if you watch those patterns,
you know they never make an aesthetic mistake.
Never.
But they are not symmetrical.
And they're very difficult to describe.
They're wiggly.
So are the markings in jade.
So is the grain in wood.
But we love the grain in wood.
And you see,
Jafu has done these paintings of rocks,
based on examples,
I think,
in the Chinese book
called The Mustard Seed Garden.
These all exhibit Li.
That is to say,
they are forms
which we know are orderly,
and we can distinguish them from messes
quite clearly.
And so, in the same way,
the foam patterns,
the rock patterns,
the patterns of vegetation
are once extraordinarily orderly,
but they don't have
an obvious order.
Nobody can ever pin it down.
That's what I'd like to say.
You know that there is order there.
There's something quite different from a mess.
But there's no way of really getting it.
Now, in order to be able
to paint that sort of way,
or to live that sort of way,
or to deliver justice that way,
if you were a judge,
you have to have it innately.
You have to have
an essential sense of Li,
and there's no way of prescribing it.
This is the very devil for teachers.
Because, you see,
all our universities and schools
are trying to teach creativity.
That's the great thing these days.
And here at the Esalen,
all sorts of people
are giving courses
and workshops in creativity.
Now, the trouble is this.
If we found out a method
whereby we could teach creativity,
and everybody could just explain
how it was done,
it would no longer be of interest.
What always is an essential element
in the creative
is the mysterious.
The dark,
it's like the black in lacquer.
The impenetrable,
and yet the profound depth
out of which glorious things come,
but nobody can see why.
There's a poem which says
that when the bird calls,
the mountain becomes more mysterious.
You imagine, for example,
you're in a mountain valley,
and everything is very silent,
and suddenly a crow squawks somewhere.
You don't know where that crow is,
and that little sound
emphasizes the silence.
Now, all those things
have in them, you see,
an element of mystery.
There's a Chinese poem
which puts it this way.
It is a poem written by a man
who has gone to find a sage
in the mountains,
and the sage has a little hut
at the foot of the mountain,
and a boy there
who is his servant.
I asked the boy
beneath the pines.
He said,
the master's gone alone,
herb gathering
somewhere on the mount,
cloud hidden,
whereabouts unknown.
In so many
athletic
and
artistic
skills,
you'll find a teacher
who teaches you
how to do it
without forcing it.
I once studied the piano.
I'm absolutely no good at it now.
Because I don't practice.
I'm
involved in other things.
But I had an absolutely
superb teacher
for a while.
He was a very, very
great musicologist.
You know,
there was nothing sloppy
about his standards.
They were the highest perfection.
But when I first went to him,
he said,
let me see what you can do.
So I played a Mascarlatti sonata.
He said,
yeah,
but the trouble with you
is you're trying too hard.
You're hitting the piano
and you should never
hit a piano.
He said,
actually,
all you've got to do
in order to play a piano
is to drop your hands on it.
And you need to have
relaxed arms.
So he made me practice
for a while.
He felt my muscles
to see whether I was
relaxed or not.
And he said,
now just drop your hand
on the piano.
I don't care what notes
you hit,
but just drop your hand.
Let it fall.
He said,
there's enough energy
in the weight of your arm
to play as loud
as you will
or as soft
as you will.
But just let it drop.
He said,
that's all you have to do,
drop your hands.
And he kept feeling my arms.
He said,
no, no,
you're getting too tense.
You must pretend
you are loud, sir.
And he was a very
educated man.
He knew about these things.
And then he said,
now after dropping
your hands,
all you've got to do
is to hit the right notes.
And he said,
you know,
the same thing is involved
in making a very complex
trill.
And he demonstrated.
He just dropped his hand
on the piano.
And at the same time,
his fingers went
like that.
And there was this
magnificent ornamentation.
Then we went on.
We'd practiced this
for some time.
He said,
now let's get around
to hitting the right notes.
And he found immediately
I had a block
on reading music.
Because when I was
a small boy
and studied piano
at the age of
roughly eight,
I had a
pestiferous teacher
who was a mistress
in this private school
I went to in England.
And she used to sit beside you
and hit your fingers
with a pencil
every time you made
a wrong note.
Gregory Bateson
I think was taught
piano as a child
in such a way.
And he has a total block
on reading music.
He's got a brilliant mind,
you know.
He's a mathematician
and great anthropologist,
ethnologist and so on.
But he has a total block
to reading music.
And so,
this man had to teach me
to overcome my block.
And he said now,
first of all,
feel perfectly free
to make mistakes.
Everybody's going to make
some mistakes
and it doesn't matter
if you make a mistake.
And if you do make a mistake,
don't go back
and do it over again,
but just go on.
So play as slowly
as you like,
don't hurry,
just so long as you keep
the relative rhythm,
the relative values
of the thing,
go slow
and take it easy.
Another thing
is to not to pay
so much attention
to the notes,
but to the distances
or intervals
between them.
Because that is
the significant jump.
And this sort of
overcomes to
the difficulty
of key signatures.
Where we start out
with this,
we started out
learning music
with this weird system
that the lines
on the stave
really represent
the major scale
of C.
And that therefore
when you put
a key signature
at the beginning,
you remember
that every time
you're playing
in F,
every time you hit B,
it should be B flat.
Well, that's
extremely tedious
way of learning music.
And you just have
to think
in different keys.
That's the only way
to adjust
to a key signature.
And play the thing
according to the
intervals appropriate
for that key.
But you see,
in this instance,
this man,
although he was
a great perfectionist
and was highly
skilled in music,
he used intelligence,
first of all,
to give you
a shortcut.
And then he also
used relaxation
to enter into
a difficult thing
by the easiest route.
in Zen training,
in its initial stages,
the master
discourages
intellectualization.
You know,
you come in
with a lot of ideas,
but this difficulty
you have
is not going
to be solved
by ideas.
It's not going
to be solved
by talk
and intellectualization.
So in the same way
this is discouraged
because
intellectualization
sets up
a kind of interval
or lack of rapport
between you
and your life.
You think about
things so much
that you get
into the state
where you're eating
the menu
instead of the dinner.
You're valuing
the money
more than the wealth.
you are confusing
as Korzybski would say
the map
with the territory.
And what they want
to do
is to get you
into the territory.
To get you
into relationship
with what is
as distinct
from ideas
about what is.
And this is
an important
preliminary discipline.
But later on
you can realize
that the process
of thinking
is also
what is.
thoughts in their own domain
are as real
as rocks.
Words
have their own reality
as much
as sky and water.
Thoughts about things
are in their own turn
things.
And so
they lead you
eventually
to the point
where you
intellectualize
and think
in an immediate way.
Let's go on
and ask then
a further problem.
How about thinking
about thinking?
Wouldn't that be
pretty far off?
Here is a person
removed from life
because he is
in the intellectual world
and he is all
living in symbols.
He is a kind
of a living bookworm.
Now what about
a librarian?
A person who
writes books
about books.
A bibliographer.
a classifier
of classifications.
That is a pretty
dusty occupation
and as we know
sometimes librarians
seem to be very dusty
people.
They seem way
removed from life.
All tied up
in their categories
and catalogues
and musts
and mustn'ts
and that too
you see
is also
its own level
of reality
and thinking
about thinking
can be lived
with just as much
direct fresh
spontaneity
as just living
without thinking.
But
in order to live it
with full spontaneity
you have to be
in a position
where you no longer
feel the symbol
the thought
the idea
the word
as a block
to life
no longer
feel it
as something
you are using
as a sort
of means
of escape.
To be able
to use the symbol
not as means
of escape
you have to know
in the first place
that you can't
escape.
And not only
that you can't
escape
but there is
no one to escape
there is no one
to be delivered
from the prison
of life
that
then
the
liberation
of the mind
from identifying
itself
with symbols
is the same
process
exactly
as breaking
up the links
between the
successive moments
the illusion
of a self
a continuing
self
travels
from moment
to moment
and picks
them all up
corresponding
to the illusion
of the moving
water
in the wave
and the moving
the solid circle
created by
the moving
cigarette point
in the dark
this is the meaning
then that there
is no one
who perceives
anything
no one
who experiences
anything
there is simply
seeing
and experiencing
there
we introduce
all these
redundancies
through talk
we talk about
seeing sights
hearing sounds
feeling feelings
all that is irrelevant
there are sights
there are sounds
there are feelings
you don't feel
a feeling
the feeling
itself
already contains
the feeling
of it
do you see
that's very simple
to have sight
you don't need
something to be seen
on the one hand
and a seer
of something
to be seen
on the other
and then
some mysterious
way
they come together
the seer
and the seen
the knower
and the known
are what we call
terms
terms mean
ends
and
they are
what in
mathematical language
are called
limits
now
when we take
a stick
the stick
has its two
ends
they are
the terms
of the stick
but the ends
of the stick
do not exist
as sort of
separate points
which encounter
each other
on the occasion
of meeting
at a stick
they are actually
abstract points
the ends
themselves
considered as
themselves
are purely
geometrical
they are
Euclidean
imaginations
the reality
is the stick
you see
so in the same
way with that
phenomenon
called
experience
the reality
is not
an encounter
of the knower
and the known
the reality
is an
experience
which can
be termed
as having
two aspects
two ends
the knower
and the known
but that's only
a figure
of speech
neurologically
this is true
everything
that you see
is yourself
what you are
aware of
is a state
of your nervous
system
and there is
no other
knowledge
whatsoever
that doesn't
mean
that your nervous
system is the
only existing
reality
and that there
is nothing
beyond your
nervous system
but it does
mean that all
knowledge
is knowledge
of you
and that
therefore
in some
mysterious
way
you
are not
different from
the external
world
that you
know
if you see
then that
what you
experience
and you
are the
same thing
then realize
also
going beyond
that
that you
are in
the external
world
you're
looking
at
you see
I'm in your
external world
you're in my
external world
but I'm in the
same world
you are
my inside
is not
separable
from the
outside world
it's something
the so-called
outside world
is doing
just as it's
doing the tree
and the ocean
and everything
else that
is in the
outside world
now isn't
that great
you see
we've
completely
got rid
of the
person
in the
trap
the one
who either
dominates
the world
or suffers
under it
it's
vanished
it never
was there
and when
that happens
you see
you can
play any
life game
you want
to
link the
past
and the
present
and the
future
together
play
roles
but you
know
you've
seen
owns
experiences
memories
sights
sounds
and from
that
other
people
possessions
so on
building up
always
this idea
of
oneself
as the
haver
of all
this
if you
think
that
you've
been
had
you've
got rid of it


===== Philosophies Of Asia - 15 - Intellectual Yoga =====

This is Audible.
Welcome to another talk from the Alan Watts Radio Series No. 2, Eastern Thought in the Modern World.
In this talk, Alan Watts gives an introduction to the Eastern traditions of yoga.
He describes the entrance into the unspeakable reality,
first from the East by practices of jnana yoga and zazen,
and then from the West through the intellectual perspectives of Lidwig Wittgenstein and Spencer Brown.
East and West all arrive at the same mysterious, that which is unspeakable.
Recorded in 1972 at the First Unitarian Church in San Francisco,
a journey to unthinking.
It's called intellectual yoga.
Here's Alan Watts.
The word yoga, as most of you doubtless know,
is the same as our word yoke, y-o-k-e,
and the Latin word yungeri, to join.
Join, junction, yoke, union,
all these words are basically from the same root.
And so likewise, when Jesus said,
my yoke is easy,
he was saying, really, my yoga is easy.
And the word, therefore, basically denotes
the state that would be the opposite of what our psychologists call alienation,
or what Buddhists call Sakaya Drishti,
the view of separateness, the feeling of separateness,
the feeling of being cut off from being.
And most civilized people do, in fact, feel that way.
Because they have a kind of myopic attention,
focused on their own boundaries,
and what is inside those boundaries,
and they identify themselves with the inside.
And don't realize that you cannot have an inside without an outside.
That would seem, wouldn't it, to be extremely elementary logic,
that we could have no sense of being ourselves,
of having a personal identity,
without the contrast of something that is not ourselves,
ourselves, that is to say, other.
But the fact that we don't realize that self and other go together
is the root of an enormous and terrifying anxiety.
Because what will happen when the inside disappears?
What will happen when the so-called I comes to an end,
as it seems to?
Of course, if it didn't,
I mean, if things did not keep moving and changing,
appearing and dissolving,
the universe would be a colossal bore.
And therefore, you are only aware that
things are all right for the moment.
I mean, I hope most of the people in this gathering
have a sort of genial sense inside them
that for the time being,
things are going on more or less okay.
Some of you may be very miserable.
And then your problem may be just a little different,
but it's essentially the same one.
But you must realize that
that sense of life being fairly all right
is inconceivable and unfeelable
unless there is way, way, way in the back of your mind
the glimmer of a possibility
that something absolutely, unspeakably awful might happen.
Doesn't have to happen.
Of course, you'll die one day.
But there always has to be the vague apprehension,
the hint of gedanka,
that the awful, awfuls are possible.
It gives spice to life.
Now, these observations
are in line with what I'm going to talk about tonight,
of the intellectual approach to yoga.
There are basically certain principal forms of yoga.
Most people are familiar with hatha yoga,
which is a psychophysical exercise system.
And that's the one you see demonstrated most on television
because it has visual value.
You can see all these exercises
of lotus positions
and people curling their legs around their necks
and doing all sorts of marvelous exercises.
And they're good exercises.
The most honest yoga teacher I know
is a woman who teaches hatha yoga
and doesn't pretend to be any other kind of guru.
And she does it very well.
Then there is bhakti yoga.
Bhakti means devotion.
And I suppose in general,
you might say that Christianity
is a form of bhakti yoga.
Because it is yoga practiced
through extreme reverence for and love for
some being felt more or less external to oneself
who is the representative of the divine.
Then there is karma yoga.
Karma means action.
And incidentally, that's all it means.
It does not mean the law of cause and effect.
When we say that something that happens to you
is your karma,
all it's saying is it's your own doing.
Nobody's in charge of karma except you.
Karma yoga is the way of action.
Of using one's everyday life,
one's trade,
or an athletic discipline like sailing or surf riding,
or track running,
as your way of yoga,
as your way of discovering who you are.
Then there's raja yoga.
That's the royal yoga.
And that's sometimes also called kundalini yoga.
And that involves very complicated psychic exercises
having to do with awakening the serpent power
that is supposed to lie at the base of one's spiritual spine
and raising it up through certain chakras or centers
until it enters into the brain.
There's a very profound symbolism involved in that.
But I'm not going into that.
And then finally, there is,
there are several others.
There's mantra yoga.
Mantra yoga, which is the practice,
through chanting,
of humming,
either out loud or silently,
certain sounds,
which become supports for contemplation
for what is in Sanskrit called jnana.
Jnana and jnana is the state
in which one is clearly awake and aware
of the world as it is,
as distinct from the world as it is described.
In other words, in the state of jnana,
you stop thinking.
That is to say,
you stop talking to yourself
and figuring to yourself
and symbolizing to yourself
what is going on.
You simply are aware of what is.
And nobody can say what it is
because, as Korzybski well said,
the real world is unspeakable.
It's a lovely double take in that.
But, that's jnana.
That's zazen.
Where one practices to sit
absolutely wide awake with eyes open,
but not thinking.
That's a very curious state,
incidentally.
I knew a professor of mathematics
at Northwestern University
who one day said,
you know, it's amazing
how many things there are
that aren't so.
You know,
he was talking about old wives' tales
and scientific superstitions
and so on.
But when you practice jnana,
you're amazed
how many things there are
that aren't so.
Because when you stop
talking to yourself
and you are simply aware
of what is,
that is to say
of what you feel,
what you sense,
even that saying too much,
you suddenly find
that the past
and the future
have completely disappeared.
So also have disappeared
the so-called differentiation
between the knower
and the known,
the subject and the object,
the feeler and the feeling,
the thinker and the thought.
They just aren't there.
Because you have to talk
to yourself
to maintain those things.
They're purely conceptual.
They're ideas.
They're phantoms, ghosts.
So when you allow thinking to stop,
all that goes away.
And you find you're in an eternal
here and now.
And there's nowhere
you're supposed to be.
There's nothing you're supposed to do.
There's nowhere you're supposed to go.
Because in order to think
you're supposed to do something,
you have to think.
And so it's incredibly important
to unthink
at least once a day.
for the very preservation
of the intellectual life.
So if
we stop that
temporarily
and get our mind
clear of thoughts,
we become,
as Jesus said,
again as children
and get a direct
view of the world.
Which is very useful
once you're an adult.
There's not much you can do
with it when you're a baby.
Because everybody pushes you around.
And you know,
they pick you up
and sit you there.
They sit you there.
And you can't do much
except practice contemplation.
Only you can't tell anyone
what it's like.
But when,
as an adult,
you can recapture
the baby's point of view,
you will know
what all child psychologists
have always wanted to know,
how it is
that a baby feels.
And the baby,
according to Freud at least,
has the oceanic experience.
That is to say,
a feeling of
complete inseparability
from what's going on.
The baby is unable
to distinguish
between the universe
and his or her
action upon the universe.
And most of us,
if we got into
that state of consciousness,
might be inclined
to feel extremely frightened.
And being,
beginning to ask,
who's in charge?
I mean,
who controls
what happens next?
We would ask that
because we are used
to the idea
that the process
of nature
consists of
controllers
and controleses.
Things that do
and things that are done to.
This is purely mythological.
So many spiritual teachers
and gurus
will look
at their disciples
and say,
I am God.
I have realized.
See?
But the important thing
is that you are.
Whether I am or not
is of no consequence
to you whatsoever.
I could get up
and say,
I have realized.
I put on a turban
and yellow robe
and whatever.
And say,
come and have darshan.
I'm guru.
You need the grace of guru
in order to realize
and so on
and that it'd be
a wonderful hoax.
It'd be like
picking your pockets
and selling you
your own watch.
But the point is,
you are.
And what are we saying
when we say that?
We're obviously saying
something very important.
Alas and alack,
there is no way
of defining it.
That is to say,
going any further
into words about it.
See,
when a philosopher
hears such a statement
as Tattuamarsi,
you are it,
or
there is only
the eternal now,
the philosopher says,
I don't see why
you're so excited about it.
What do you mean by that?
And that he asks
that question
because he wants
to continue
in a word game.
He doesn't want
to go on
into an experiential dimension.
He wants to go on
arguing
because that's his trip.
And all these
great mystical statements
mean nothing whatsoever.
They're ultimate statements.
Just as,
you know,
the trees
and the clouds
and the mountains
and the stars
have no meaning
because they're not words.
Words have meaning.
Because they're symbols.
Because they point
to something
other than themselves.
But
the stars
like music.
Music,
only bad music
has any meaning.
Classical music
never has a meaning.
And to understand it,
you must simply
listen to it
and observe
its beautiful patterns.
Go into its complexity.
So,
when your mind,
that is to say,
your verbal systems,
get to the end
of their tether,
that is to say,
when they arrive
at the meaningless statement,
here is the critical point.
And the method
of jnana yoga
is to exercise
one's intellect
to its limits
so that you get
to the point
where you have
no further questions
to ask.
You can do this
in philosophy study,
if you've got
the right kind
of teacher
who shows you
that all philosophical
opinions whatsoever
are false,
or at least,
if not false,
extremely partial.
And so,
you feel
a kind of
intellectual vertigo
which is called
in a Zen Buddhist poem,
above,
not a tile
to cover the head,
below,
not an inch
of ground
to stand on.
Well,
where are you then?
Well,
of course,
you always were.
You've discovered
you're it.
And that's
very uncomfortable
because
you can't grab it.
See,
here,
I've discovered
that whatever it is
that I am,
that's not something
inside my head.
It is just as much
out there
as it is in here,
but whatever it is,
I cannot get hold of it.
Well,
that gives you
the heebie-jeebies.
You get butterflies
in the stomach,
anxiety,
traumas,
and all kinds of things.
But this is all
explained by Shankara,
the great Hindu
commentator
on the Upanishads,
the great master
of the non-dualistic
doctrine
of the universe,
when he said,
that which knows,
which is in all
beings,
the knower,
is never an object
of its own knowledge.
So, therefore,
to everyone
who is in quest
of the supreme kick,
the great experience,
the vision of God,
whatever you want
to call it,
liberation,
when you think
that you're not it,
any old guru
can sell you
on a method
to find it.
And that may not
be a bad thing
for him to do,
because,
as Blake said,
a fool who persists
in his folly
will become wise.
And a clever guru
is the person
who leads you on.
Here, kitty, kitty,
kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty.
I've got something
very good to show you.
Yeah.
You just wait.
Oh, but you've got
to go through
a lot of stages yet.
You say,
ha, ha, ha, ha,
ha, ha, ha, ha.
Can I get that?
Oh, I want to get that.
All the time,
it's you.
I was talking
to the Zen Master
the other day,
and he said,
you should be
my disciple.
I looked at him
and said,
who was Buddha's
teacher?
And he looked at me
in a very odd way
and said,
ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
So he birthed into laughter
and he gave me
a piece of clover.
So,
you see,
so long as you
can be persuaded
that there's something
more that you ought
to be than you are,
you've divided
yourself
from
reality,
from the universe,
from God,
or whatever you
want to call that,
the Tat
and you will find
constantly,
if you,
if you are interested
in anything like this,
in psychoanalysis,
in, uh,
gestalt therapy,
in, uh,
sensitivity training,
in any kind of yoga,
or what have you,
that there will be
that
funny sensation
of what I'll call
spiritual greed
that can be aroused
by somebody
indicating to you,
hmm,
there are still
higher stages
for you to attain.
You should meet
my guru.
So,
uh,
you
might say
then now,
to be truly
realized,
you have to get
to the point
where you're not
seeking anymore.
So then you begin
to think,
non-seekers.
You know,
like disciples
of Krishnamurti,
who,
because he says
he doesn't read
any spiritual books,
they can't read
anything but
mystery stories.
You know,
becoming, uh,
spiritually
unspiritual.
Well,
you'll find
that that too
is what is called
in Zen
legs on a snake.
It's irrelevant.
You don't need
not to seek.
Because you don't
need anything.
And I, you know,
it's like crawling
into a hole
and pulling the hole
in after you.
And the great
master of this
technique
was a
Buddhist
scholar
who lived
about, uh,
200 AD
called Nagarjuna.
He invented
a whole dialectic.
He had a whole
school
called
Madhyamika
where
the,
as it were,
leader of the
students
would simply
destroy all
their ideas.
absolutely
abolished
their
philosophical
notions.
And there
get the
heebie-jeebies.
They see
he didn't
have the
heebie-jeebies.
He seemed
perfectly relaxed
and not having
any particular
point of view.
Well,
they said,
teacher,
how can you
stand it?
We have to
have something
to hang on to.
Who does?
Who are you?
And eventually
you discover,
of course,
that it's not
necessary to
hang on to
anything,
to rely on
anything.
There's nothing
to rely on
because you're
it.
It's like the
universe.
It's like asking
the question,
where is the
universe?
And by that,
I mean the
whole universe.
Whereabouts
is it in
space?
Everything in
it is falling
around everything
else, but
there's no
concrete floor
underneath
for the thing
to crash
because the
space, you
can think
of infinite
space if you
like, you
don't have
to think of
curved space.
The space
that goes out
and out
forever and
ever and
has no
end, what
is that?
Of course,
it's you.
What else
could it be?
Only the
universe is
delightfully
arranged so
that as it
looks at
itself, in
order not to
be one-sided
and prejudiced,
it looks at
itself from
an uncountable
number of
points of
view.
We thus
avoid
solipsism,
which is if
I were to
have the
notion that
it's only
me that's
really here
and you're
all in my
dream.
Of course,
that point of
view cannot
really be
disputed,
except by
imagining a
conference of
solipsists
arguing as
to which
one of them
was the
one that
was really
there.
Now, you
see, if you
understand what
I'm saying
with your
intelligence,
and then
take the
next step
and say,
but I
understood it
now, but
I didn't
feel it.
Then next
I raise
the question,
why do you
want to
feel it?
You say,
I want
something more,
because that's
again that
spiritual greed.
And you
could only
say that
because you
didn't
understand it.
There is
nothing to
pursue because
you're it.
And if you
don't know
that, you
always were
it.
And if you
don't know
that, in
other words,
to put it in
Christian terms,
or Jewish
terms, if you
don't know that
you're God from
the beginning,
what happens
is that you
try to become
God by force.
Therefore, you
start being
violent and
obstreperous and
this and that
and the other.
All our
violence, all
our competitiveness,
all our
terrific anxiety
to survive,
is because we
didn't know from
the beginning that
we were it.
Well, then you
would say, if we
did know from
the beginning,
as in fact you
did, when you
were a baby,
then everybody
says, well,
nothing would
ever happen.
But it did
happen, didn't
it?
And it's
some of it's
pretty messy.
But what
people don't
realize is
they say,
well, take
take the
Hindus.
It's basic
to Hindu
religion that
we are all
God in
disguise and
that the
world is an
illusion.
All that
is a sort
of half
true.
But if that
is the case,
if Hindus
and really
awakened
Hindus, by
the knowledge
of their
union with
the Godhead,
would simply
become inert,
why then
Hindu music,
the most
incredibly
complex,
marvelous
technique?
think, when
they sit and
play, they
laugh at
each other.
They're
enjoying
themselves
enormously
with
very
complicated
musical
games.
But when we
come and the
symphony orchestra
gets up,
everybody dresses in
evening dress and a
serious expression and
all the audience is
down and it's like it's in a
kind of church and
there's none of that
terrific zest where
the drummer, the
tabla player, laughs at
the sarod player as
they compete with
each other in all
kinds of marvelous
improvisations.
So if you do find out
by any chance who you
really are, you
instead of becoming
merely lazy, you know,
you start laughing and
laughing leads to
dancing and dancing
needs music and we
can play with each
other for a change.
You've been
listening to
Intellectual Yoga
with Alan Watts
from the Alan Watts
radio series number
two, Eastern
Thought in the
Modern World.
The Love of Wisdom
with Alan Watts is
produced by the
Electronic University.
I'm Neil Harvey.
Thank you for
listening.


===== Philosophies Of Asia - 11 - Relevance Of Oriental Philosophy II =====

The point that I wish to make most strongly is that behind a vital religious life for the West,
there has to be faith which is not expressed in things to which you cling,
in ideas, opinions, to which you cling in a kind of desperation.
Faith is the act of letting go, and that must begin with letting go of God, let God go.
But you see, this is not atheism in the ordinary sense.
Atheism in the ordinary sense is fervently hoping that there isn't a God.
It has become extremely plausible that this trip between the maternity ward and the crematorium is what there is to life.
And we still have, going into our common sense, the 19th century myth, which succeeded the ceramic myth in Western history.
I call it the myth of the fully automatic model of the universe.
Namely, that it's stupid, it's blind force, Haeckel's gyration or fortuitous congress of atoms,
is of the same vintage as Freud's libido, the blind surge of lust at the basis of human psychology.
But, when you consider this attitude, you know, what is the poetic counterpart of it?
Man is a little germ that lives on an unimportant rock ball that revolves about an insignificant star
on the outer edges of one of the smaller galaxies.
God, what a put-down that was.
But, on the other hand, if you think about that for a few minutes,
I am absolutely amazed to discover myself on this rock ball rotating around a spherical fire.
It's a very odd situation.
And the more I look at things, I cannot get rid of the feeling that existence is quite weird.
I know that.
See, a philosopher is a sort of intellectual yokel who gawks at things that sensible people take for granted.
And sensible people, existence is nothing at all.
I mean, it's just basic, and just go on and do something.
See, this is the current movement in philosophy.
Logical analysis says you mustn't think about existence.
It's a meaningless concept.
Therefore, philosophy has become the discussion of trivia.
And philosophical journals is now as satisfactorily dull as any other kind of purely technical inquiry.
No good philosopher lies awake nights worrying about the destiny of man and the nature of God and all that sort of thing.
Because a philosopher today is a practical fellow who comes to the university with a briefcase at nine and leaves at five.
He does philosophy during the day, which is discussing whether certain sentences have meaning,
and if so, what?
And then he would, as William Earle said in a very funny essay,
he would come to work in a white coat if he thought he could get away with it.
The problem is, he's lost his sense of wonder.
Wonder is like, in modern philosophy, something you mustn't have.
It's like enthusiasm in 18th century England.
It's a very bad form.
But you see, I don't know what question to ask when I wonder about the universe.
It isn't a question that I'm wondering about, it's a feeling that I have.
Imagine, if you had an interview with God,
everybody was going to have an interview with God,
and you were allowed to ask one question.
What would you ask?
And don't rush into it.
You will soon find that you have no idea what to ask.
Because I cannot formulate the question that is my wonder.
The moment my mouth opens to utter it, I suddenly find I'm talking nonsense.
But that should not prevent wonder from being the foundation of philosophy.
Of, well, as Aristotle said, wonder is the beginning of philosophy.
Because it strikes you that existence is very, very strange.
And then more so, when this so-called insignificant little creature
has inside his skull a neurological contraption
that is able to center itself in the midst of these incredible expansive galaxies
and start measuring the whole thing.
That is quite extraordinary.
And then furthermore, when you realize
that in a world where there are no eyes, the sun would not be light,
and that in a world where there were no soft skins, rocks would not be hard.
Nor in a world where there were no muscles, would they be heavy.
Existence is relationship, and you are smack in the middle of it.
So, there is obviously a place in life for a religious attitude
in the sense of awe, astonishment, at existence.
And that is also a basis of respect for existence.
We don't have very much of it in this culture,
even though we call it materialistic.
A materialist is a person who loves material.
And I suppose in the Christian tradition, and in the Jewish,
one would say that the Lord God is the greatest materialist.
Because, you know, as William Temple once said,
God is interested in many other things than religion.
Were God only interested in religion,
the world would consist of nothing but church buildings and Bibles and clergymen.
And that would be pretty boring.
So, in the culture that we call materialistic today,
we are, of course, bent on the total destruction of material
and its conversion into junk and poisonous gas as quickly as possible.
This is not a materialistic culture,
because it has no respect for material.
And respect is, in turn, based on wonder,
on feeling the marvel of just an ordinary pebble in your fingers.
So, I'm afraid, you see, for the God is dead theology,
that it will sort of drift off into secular do-goodery
in the name of Jesus.
And this is, I think, where we can be strongly revivified
and stimulated by the introduction into our spiritual life
of certain things that are oriental.
Now, you see, it must be understood
that the crux of the Hindu and Buddhist disciplines
is an experience, not a theory,
not a belief.
If we say that a religion
is a combination of creed, code, and cult,
in other words, this is true of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity.
And if they are religions, Buddhism is not.
Because the creed is a revelation,
a revealed symbolism of what the universe is about
and you are commanded to believe in it on the divine authority.
The code is the revealed will of God for man,
which you are commanded to obey,
and the cult is the divinely revealed form of worship
which you must practice.
Commandment.
Because God is boss, he's ruler,
king of kings and lord of laws.
But the disciplines, say, of yoga in Hinduism
or of the various forms of Buddhist meditation
do not require you to believe anything.
And they have no commandments in them.
They do indeed have precepts,
but they are really vows
which you undertake on your own responsibility,
not in obedience to anybody.
They are experimental techniques
for changing consciousness.
And the thing they are mainly concerned with
is helping human beings
to get rid of the hallucination
that each one of us is a skin-encapsulated ego.
You know, a little source,
a little man inside your head
located between the ears and behind the eyes
who is the source of conscious attention
and voluntary behavior.
Most people, you know,
don't really think that they are anything but that
and that the body is a thing you have.
Mummy, who would I have been
if my father had been someone else?
See, the parents give you the body
and you pop the soul into it
at some period, conception or parturition,
nobody could ever decide.
And this attitude stays with us
that we are something in a body,
that we have a body.
And we are not it.
So we experience the beating of the heart
as something that happens to me
whereas talking or walking
is something that I do.
Don't you beat your heart?
Language won't allow you to think that.
It's not customary to say so.
How do you think?
How do you manage to be conscious?
You don't know.
How do you open and close your hand?
Do you know?
If you're a physiologist,
you may be able to say,
but that doesn't help you
to open and close your hand
any better than I do.
See, I know how to do it,
but I can't put it into words.
In the same way,
the Hindu god knows
how he creates this whole universe
because he does it.
But he wouldn't explain it.
That would be stupid.
You might as well try to drink
the Pacific Ocean with a fork.
So when a Hindu gets enlightened
and he recovers from the hallucination
of being a skin-encapsulated ego
and finds out that central to his own self
is the eternal self of the universe,
and you go up to him and say,
well, how do you do all this?
He says, well, just like you open
and close your hand.
And because we're all it.
Whenever a questioner
used to come to Sri Ramana,
the great Hindu sage
who died a few years ago,
they said to him,
Master, was I living before
in a previous incarnation?
And if so, who was I?
And he would say,
who is asking the question?
Who are you?
And a spiritual teacher
in both Hinduism and Buddhism
is a kind of...
Well, what he does to awaken you,
to get you over the hallucination
of being the skin-encapsulated ego,
he bugs you in a certain way.
He has a funny look in his eye,
as if to say,
come off it, Shiva,
I know what you're doing.
And you say, what, me?
And he looks at you in a funny way.
And finally,
you get a feeling
that he sees all the way through you.
And therefore,
that all your selfish and evil thoughts
and nastinesses
are transparent to this gaze.
And then you have to try and alter them.
He suggests, you see,
that you practice the control of the mind.
That you become desireless.
You give up selfish desire
so as to cease to be a skin-encapsulated self.
And then you may have some success
in quieting your mind
and in concentrating.
But then after that,
he's throw a curve at you.
Which is,
but aren't you still desiring not to desire?
Why are you trying to be unselfish?
Well, the answer is,
I want to be on the side of the big battalions.
I think it's going to pay better
to be unselfish than to be selfish.
Well,
Luther saw that.
Augustine saw that.
But there it is.
Because what he's done, you see,
he's beginning to make you see
the unreality,
the hallucinatory quality
of a separate self.
This has merely conventional reality
in the same sense
as lines of latitude and longitude,
the measurements of the clock.
That's why one of the meanings of
maya, illusion,
is measurement.
Things, for example,
are measurements.
They are units of thought,
like inches are units of measurement.
There are no things in physical nature.
How many things is a thing?
It's any number you want.
Because a thing is a think.
A unit of thought.
It's as much of reality
as you can catch hold of
in one idea.
So,
when this
realization
of the hallucination
of the separate self
comes about,
it comes about
through discovering
that your alleged separate self
can't do anything.
It can't improve itself,
either by doing something about it
or by doing nothing about it.
Both ways
are based on illusion.
You see,
this is what you have to do
to get people
out of hallucinations.
You make them act consistently
on the suppositions
of the hallucination.
People who believe
that the earth is flat
cannot possibly be
talked into seeing
that it's round
because they know
it's flat.
Because can't you see?
So what you do is this.
You say,
let's go and look over the edge.
Wouldn't that be fun?
But you see,
to be sure
that we do get to the edge,
you'll be very careful
not to walk in circles.
So you perform a discipline.
You go steadily
and rigorously westwards
along latitude 40
or something.
And then when you get back
to the place
where you started,
he is convinced
that the world
is at least cylindrical
by experiment,
by reductio ad absurdum
of his premises.
And so in the same way
the guru,
whether hindu or buddhist,
performs a reductio ad absurdum
on the premise
of the skin-encapsulated ego.
Well, what happens then?
You might imagine
from garbled accounts
of eastern mysticism
that one thereupon
disappears forever
into an infinite sea
of faintly mauve jello
and become so lost
to the world
and entranced
that you forget
your name,
address,
telephone number
and function in life.
And nothing of the kind happens.
The state of mystical illumination,
although it may
in its sudden onset
be accompanied
by a sensation
of tremendous luminescence
and transparency,
as you get used to it,
it's just like everyday life.
Here are the things
that you formerly thought
were separate individuals
and here is you
who you formerly thought
was merely confronting
these other people.
When the great Dr. D.T. Suzuki
was asked
what is it like
to be enlightened,
he said
it's just like
ordinary everyday experience
except about
two inches off the ground
because what is altered
is not the way
your senses perceive.
What is altered
is what you think about it,
your definitions
of what you see,
your evaluation of it.
So when you don't cling to it,
when you have no longer
a hostile attitude
to the world
because you know
the world is you,
it is.
I mean,
let's take it
from the point of view
of biology.
If I describe
the behavior
of a living organism,
I cannot possibly
describe that behavior
without simultaneously
describing the behavior
of the environment
so that I discover
that I don't describe
organisms in environments,
I describe
a unified field
of behavior
called an organism
environment.
It's an awkward word.
But there it is.
The environment
doesn't push
the organism around.
The organism doesn't
push the environment
around.
They are two aspects
or poles
of the same process.
And so you have
to understand
that this attitude
towards nature,
seeing the fundamental
unity of the self
which manifests it all
is not an attitude
as missionaries
are apt to suppose
which denies
the value
of differentiation.
You must understand
the principle
of what are called
identical differences.
Take a coin.
The head side
is a different side
from the tail side.
And yet the two
are inseparable.
Take the operation
of buying and selling.
Selling is a different
operation from buying.
But you can't buy
unless somebody sells
at the same time
and vice versa.
This is what is meant
by the underlying
unity of opposites.
What is called
in Hinduism
Advaita
or non-duality.
Or when the Chinese
use the word
Tao
to designate
the way of operation
of the positive
and negative principles
the Yang
and the Yin.
It is not a unity
that annihilates
differences
but a unity
which is manifested
by the very
differentiations
that we perceive.
Just as
it's all polar.
It's like the two poles
of a magnet.
Different
but yet one magnet.
So when we say
oriental monism
is a point of view
towards life
which merges
everything
into a kind
of sickening goo.
This is terribly unfair.
It just isn't so.
If you argue
that the sort of doctrine
that everybody
is really the Godhead
destroys the possibility
of real love
between individuals
because you have
to be definitely
other than I
if I'm to love you
otherwise it's all self-love.
Well that argument
collapses in view
of the doctrine
of the Trinity.
If the three persons
are one God
then they can't
love each other
by the same argument.
Hinduism simply
uses the idea
which is in the
Christian Trinity
only it makes it
a multi-Trinity
instead of the
three one.
That's all.
Of course
the thorn in the flesh
is always
in approaching
a doctrine
which seems
to be monistic
or pantheistic
what about evil?
Are we to make
the ground of being
responsible for evil?
And we don't want
to do that
because we want
to keep God's skirts clean
in spite of the fact
that our own
Hebrew Bible
says
I am the Lord
there is none else
I form the light
and create darkness
I make peace
and create evil
I the Lord
do all these things
and haven't you
heard the story
about the Yetzir Hara
that according
to Jewish theology
the Lord God
implanted in Adam
at the beginning
of time
a thing called
the Yetzir Hara
it means the
wayward spirit
I call it the
element of
irreducible
rascality
and it's very
necessary to have
this in order
to be human
you see
how it was done
was this prohibition
not to eat
of the fruit
of the tree
of knowledge
that was the
one sure way
of getting
of getting it
eaten
but of course
when the Lord God
accused Adam
and said
you've been eating
of that tree
I told you
not to eat
and he passed
the buck to Eve
and said
this woman
that thou gavest me
she tempted me
and I did eat
he looked at Eve
now what about it
he said
well it was the serpent
he looked at the serpent
the serpent
didn't say anything
because he knew
too much
and he wasn't going
to give away
the show
who is it
that sits
at the left
hand of God
we know
who sits
at the right
hand
it's hushed up
because that's
the side
where the district
attorney sits
and in the book
of Job
of course
you know
Satan
is the district
attorney
at the court
of heaven
he's the prosecutor
he's a faithful
servant
of the court
because you see
the whole problem
is
it would be
very bad
indeed
if God
were the author
of evil
and we
were his
victims
that is to say
if we keep
the model
of the king
of the universe
and the creatures
are all subjects
of the king
then
a God
who is responsible
for evil
is being very
unkind
to other people
but in this theory
God is not
another person
there are no
victims of God
he's never
anything but
his own victim
you are responsible
and if you want
to stay
in the state
of illusion
stay in it
but you can
always wake up


===== Philosophies Of Asia - 12 - Mythology Of Hinduism II =====

I want to start out by explaining quite carefully what I mean by mythology.
The word is very largely used today to mean fantasy or something that is definitely not
fact.
And it's used, therefore, in a pejorative or put-down sense, so that when you call something
a mythology or a myth, it means you don't think much of it.
But the word is used by philosophers and scholars in quite another sense, where to speak in
the language of myth is to speak in images rather than to speak in what you might call
plain language or the language of fact, descriptive language.
You can sometimes say more things with images than you can say with concepts.
As a matter of fact, images are really at the root of thinking.
One of the basic ways in which we think is by analogy.
We say a certain thing is, say, we think of the life of human beings might be compared to
the seasons of the year.
Now there are many important differences between a human life and the cycle of the seasons.
But nevertheless, one talks about the winter of life or the spring of life, and so the image
becomes something that is powerful in our thinking.
Furthermore, when we try to think philosophically and think in abstract concepts about the nature
of the universe, we often do some very weird things.
You see, it's considered nowadays naïve to think of God as an old gentleman with a long
white beard who sits on a golden throne and is surrounded with winged angels.
And we say now no sensible person could possibly believe that God is just like that.
Therefore, if you get more sophisticated, you believe that God is, say, if you follow St.
Thomas Aquinas, you think of God as necessary being.
Or if you think with Buddhists, you think of God as the undifferentiated void or as the infinite
essence.
But actually, however rarefied those concepts sound, they are just as anthropomorphic, that
is to say, just as human and in the form of the human mind as the picture of God as the
old gentleman with a white beard or de Lorde in green pastures wearing a top hat and smoking
a cigar.
Because all ideas about the world, whether they be religious, philosophical or scientific,
are translations of the physical world and of worlds beyond the physical into the terms
and shapes of the human mind.
So there is no such thing as a non-anthropomorphic idea.
The advantage of de Lorde in talking about these things is that nobody takes it quite seriously.
Whereas the undifferentiated aesthetic continuum could be taken seriously.
And that would be a great mistake.
Because you would think you understood what the ultimate reality is.
So I'm going to use very largely naive mythological terms to discuss these matters.
And if you are a devout Christian, you mustn't be offended by this because you will naturally
think that you have risen now to a more superior idea of these things than these very simple
terms derived from the imagery of the Bible and of the medieval church.
But I shall discuss Hinduism in the same way.
And I'm going to begin with Hinduism to give you a sort of fundamental account of what it's
all about.
I imagine some of you were present at the lecture I gave in the university on religion and art.
And I discussed the view of the world as drama.
Now I want to go more thoroughly into this because the Hindu view of the universe is fundamentally
based on the idea of drama.
That is to say, of an actor playing parts.
The basic actor in this drama is called Brahma.
And this word comes from the Sanskrit root brh, which means to swell or expand.
And the Hindu idea of Brahma, the supreme being, is linked with the idea of the self.
In you, deep down, you feel that there is what you call I.
And this word, when you say I am, that in Sanskrit is aham, A-H-A-M.
And everybody, when asked what his name is, replies, I am I, I am I myself.
And so there is the thought that in all life the self is the fundamental thing.
It means the center.
And so the Brahma is looked upon as the self and center of the whole universe.
And the idea, fundamentally, is that there is only one self.
And each one of us is that self.
Only it radiates like a sun or a star.
And just as the sun has innumerable rays, or just as you can focus the whole sun through
a magnifying glass and concentrate it on one point, or as an octopus has many tentacles,
or as a sow has many tits.
So in this way, Brahma is wearing all faces that exist.
And they are all the masks of Brahma.
Not only human faces, but animal faces, insect faces, vegetable faces, and mineral faces.
Everything that there is, is the supreme self playing at being that.
Because the fundamental process of reality is, according to the Hindu myth, hide and seek.
That or lost and found, that is the basis of all games.
And it's true, isn't it, that when you start to play with a baby, and you take up a book,
and you hide your face behind it, and then you peek out at the baby, and then you peek
out this way, the baby begins to giggle.
Because a baby, being near to the origins of things, knows intuitively that hide and seek
is the basis of it all.
And children like to sit in a high chair, or they have something on the tray, and make
it gone.
And then somebody picks it up and puts it back, and they make it gone again, you see?
Now then, that's a very sensible arrangement.
It is called, in Sanskrit, it is called lila.
And that means sport or play, but the play is hide and seek.
Now let's go a little bit into the nature of hide and seek, because don't let me insult
your intelligence by telling you some of the most elementary things that exist.
Really everything is a question of appearing and disappearing.
For example, if I sit next to a beautiful girl, and I put my hand on her knee, and leave it
there, after a while she'll cease to notice it.
But if I gently pat her on the knee, because now I'm there and now I'm not, it will be
more noticeable.
So all reality is a matter of coming and going.
It is vibration.
It is the waves of positive and negative electricity.
It's up and down.
And things like wood appear to be solid, because in much the same way that the blade of a fast-moving
electric fan appears to be solid.
So the vast agitation that is going on in the electrical structure of solid things is
a terrific agitation which will not allow the agitation called my hand to go through it.
Other kinds of agitation, like x-rays, are so constructed that they can get through.
So everything is basically coming and going.
For example, sound.
If you listen to sound and slow sound down in the same way as you can slow sound down
in the same way as you can use a magnifying glass to look at the structure of something
visible.
And as when you look at the magnifying glass you find that solid things are full of holes,
so when you magnify sound you find it's full of silences.
Sound is sound hyphen silence.
There is no such thing as pure sound, just as there is no such thing as pure something.
Something always goes together with nothing.
Solids are always found in spaces, and no spaces are found except where there are solids.
You might imagine there being a space without any solid in it, but you will never, never
encounter one, because you will be there in the form of a solid to find out about it.
You see, they go together, these things.
The solid in the space, the positive in the negative, the here we are and here we aren't,
go together in the same way as the back and front of a coin.
And you can't have a coin that has a back and no front.
The only thing that gets anywhere near that is a Mobius strip, which is a mathematical conceit
which, uh, in which the back and the front are the same.
But that only shows, in a more vivid way, how backs and fronts go together.
Now, so, the whole thing is based on that, you see.
Now, once we've got this game, that there are two different things, but they're really the
same.
See?
The Brahma is what is basic, but the Brahma manifests itself in what are called the Dvanva, and that
means the pairs of opposites.
Duality.
Dvanva, you see, is the root of the Sanskrit word for two, which becomes duo in Latin and
dual in English.
Two is the basis.
You can't go behind two because one has an opposite.
The opposite of one is none.
Now what is in common between one and none?
No one can say.
Shh.
You can't mention it.
It's called Brahma, and it's sometimes called Om, O-M.
And, uh, but you can't really think of what is in common between black and white.
There is obviously a conspiracy between black and white, because they're always found together.
Tweedledum and Tweedledee agreed to have a battle.
See, there's always an agreement underlying this difference.
But that is what we call implicit.
The difference is explicit.
So the first step in what you might call the hide phase of the game of hide-and-seek is
to lose sight of the implicit unity between black and white, between yes and no, between
existence and non-existence.
And that losing sight of the fundamental unity is called Maya.
Maya, a word that means many things, but primarily it means creative power or magic and also illusion.
The illusion that the opposites are really separate from each other.
And once you could think that they are really separated from each other, you can have a very thrilling game.
The game is, oh dear, black might win.
Or, we must be quite sure that white wins.
Now, which one ought to win?
Sometimes when you look at this, you would say, or this, the reality here is the writing.
That is what is significant.
And yet there are many patterns that one can have when you're undecided in your mind as
to what is the figure and what is the background.
It could be a black design on a white sheet, or it could be a white design on a black sheet.
And the universe is very much like that.
Space or the background of things isn't nothing.
But people tend to be deceived about this.
If I draw that, most people, when asked what I have drawn, will say that I have drawn a circle, or a disc, or a ball.
Very few people will ever suggest that I've drawn a hole in a wall.
Because people think inside first, rather than thinking out here.
But actually, the two sides go together.
You can't have what's in here unless you have what's out there.
So all artists, all architects, all people concerned with the organization of space,
think quite as much about the background behind things and containing things as they do about
the things so contained.
It's all significant and it's all important.
But the game is, let's pretend that this doesn't exist.
So that's the pretending, oh, black might win.
Or oh, white might win.
And so, you see, that is the foundation of all the great games that human beings play.
Of checkers, of chess, and of the simple children's games of hide-and-seek.
And it's, of course, you see, the tradition of chess that white gets the first move because black is the side of the devil.
So all complications and all possibilities of life lie in this game of black and white.
You can put it in another way.
In the beginning of the game, when the two pairs are divided, that is to dismember, to cut, to separate.
In the end of the game, when everything comes together, they are remembered.
To dismember is to hide or to lose.
To dismember is to seek and to find.
To remember is to seek and to find.
And so, the Hindu mythology is this.
That the Brahma plays this game through periods of time called a Kalpa.
And every Kalpa is 4,320,000 years long.
And for a Kalpa, he forgets who he is and manifests himself or pretends he acts the part of, as the great actor, of all of us.
And then, for another Kalpa, he wakes up, remembers who he is and is at peace.
So, the period in which he manifests the worlds is called a Manvantara.
And the period in which he withdraws the game is called the Pralaya.
And these go on and on and on forever and ever and ever.
And the whole thing is that it never becomes boring.
Because the forgetting period makes you forget everything that's happened before.
So that each time, for example, a baby comes to birth,
a baby is, although inheriting genes from the most distant past,
the baby always confronts the world anew and is astonished and surprised at everything.
But as you get old, you get heavy with memories.
You get like a book that people have written on and written on and written on,
as if I was to go on writing on this, and eventually the whole thing would become black.
And then I'd have to take out a white chalk and start doing it that way.
Well, that would be like the change, you see, between life and death.
Now, in popular Hinduism, it is believed that each one of us contains not only the Supreme Self,
the one ultimate reality, the Brahma, who looks out from all eyes and hears through all ears.
But there's also an individualized self.
And this self reincarnates from life to life in a sort of progressive way or a regressive way,
according to your karma, the Sanskrit word which means your doing.
Karma from the root, kri, to do.
And so there is a time then, you see, in which we become involved and get more and more tied up in the toils of the world,
more and more subject to desire and to passions and to getting ourselves hopelessly out on the limb.
Then there follows a later time when the individual is supposed to withdraw and gradually evolve until he becomes a completely enlightened man,
what is called a mukti.
A mukti is a liberated person who has attained the state called moksha, or liberation.
He has found himself. He knows who he is.
He knows that he, deep down in himself, and that you, deep down in yourselves, are all the one central self,
and that this whole apparent differentiation of the one from the other is an immense and glorious illusion.
Now, you see, I said at the beginning that this is a dramatic idea.
In drama, we have a convention of the proscenium arch and the stage,
and we have a convention of on-scene and off-scene.
There is the curtain or backdrop in front of which the actors appear,
and behind that there's a dressing room called the green room.
And in the green room they put on and take off their masks.
And in Latin, the word for the masks worn by the players in classical drama was persona.
That, the Latin word per means through, sona, sound, that through which the sound comes,
because the mask was, had a megaphone-shaped mouth which would throw the sound in an open-air theatre.
So dramatis personae, the list of the players in front of a play, means the list of masks that are going to be worn.
And insofar as we now talk about the real self in any human being as the person,
are you a real person?
We have inverted the meaning of the word, and we have made the mask word mean the real player underneath.
That shows how deeply involved we are in the illusion.
Because, you see, the whole point of a play, the skill of the actor,
is to persuade the audience, despite the fact that the audience knows it's at the play,
is to have them sitting on the edge of their chairs, or weeping, or in terror because they think it's real.
And so, of course, the Hindu idea is that the greatest of all players,
the master player behind the whole shebang, who's putting on the big act called existence,
is so good an actor that he takes himself into it.
He is at once the actor and the audience, and he is enchanted by his playing.
So the word maya, illusion, also means to be enchanted.
You know what to be enchanted is?
Is to be listening to a chant, and to be completely involved in it.
Or he is amazed.
What is to be amazed?
It is to be caught in a maze.
Or spellbound.
How do you get spellbound?
What do you spell?
You spell words.
And so, by the ideas we have about the world, and through our belief in the reality of different things and events,
we get completely carried away, and altogether forget who we are.
There is a story about a great sage, Narada, who came to Vishnu.
Vishnu is one of the aspects of the Godhead, Brahma.
Mah is usually the word given to the creator aspect, Vishnu to the preserving aspect, and Shiva to the destructive aspect.
But when the Narada came to Vishnu and said,
What is the secret of your maya?
Vishnu took him and threw him into a pool.
And the moment he fell under the pool, he was born as a princess in a very great family,
and went through all the experiences of childhood and being a little girl,
finally married to a prince from another kingdom, and she went to live with him in his kingdom.
And they were in tremendous prosperity and palaces and peacocks and all that kind of thing.
Then suddenly there was a war, and their kingdom was attacked and utterly destroyed,
and the prince himself was killed in battle, and so he was cremated, and she, as a dutiful wife,
was about to throw herself weeping on the funeral pyre and burn herself in an act of sati, or self-sacrifice.
When suddenly, Narada awoke to find himself being pulled out of the pool by his hair, and Vishnu said,
For whom were you weeping?
So, that idea of the whole world being a magical illusion,
but done so skillfully, by whom? By you!
Basically. Not you, the empirical ego. Not you who is just a kind of focus of conscious attention,
with memories that are strung together into what you call my everyday self.
But the you that is responsible for growing your hair, for colouring your eyes,
for arranging the shape of your bones, the deeply responsible you is what is responsible for all this.
So, then, this in sum, then, is this Hindu dramatic idea of the cosmos,
as an endless hide-and-seek game. Now you see it, now you don't.
And, er, so it's saying to everybody, really,
of course you worry, and you're afraid of disease, and death, and pain, and all that sort of thing, of course.
But it's all an illusion. There's nothing to be afraid of.
And you think, well, er, but my goodness, supposing when I die, there just won't be anything.
Be like you're going to sleep and never waking up.
Isn't that awful? I mean, that's just terrible. Nothing forever.
It doesn't matter.
You know, when you go into that period called death or forgetting,
that's just so that you won't remember.
Because if you did always remember, it'd be a bore.
But you are wiser than you know because you arrange to forget.
You arrange to die and keep going in and out of the light.
But underneath, at the basis of all this, between black and white, between life and death,
is something unmentionable that's really you. That's the secret.
And you don't give the show away, see?
All of you are now privy to a secret. You're initiates, you see?
You know this little thing, but you may not have experienced it.
But you know about it.
But you mustn't give the show away.
Don't run out in the street suddenly and say to everybody, I'm God, see?
Because they won't understand you.
You know this little thing, but he challenged.
It doesn't mean you were MARTINA, the same thing.
You know that.
You know, the same thing.
The same thing.
But the same thing.
But there are also wiser in the street.
That's a certain thing.
You know, the same thing.
That's up to you.
But even then, a lot of stuff does not have to do.
But you know what the hell.
It's a beautiful thing.
That's a beautiful thing.
So that's a beautiful thing, and I can tell you.