Subtitles
we are thinking about vast abstractions 00:00:00
we are thinking about vast abstractions ideologies called communism 00:00:04
capitalism uh all these 00:00:11
systems and paying less and less 00:00:15
attention 00:00:17
to the world of physical reality to the 00:00:19
world of 00:00:21
earth and trees and waters 00:00:24
people and so are in the name of all 00:00:27
sorts of abstractions busy destroying 00:00:31
our natural environment not so long ago 00:00:35
the congress voted 00:00:39
a law imposing stern penalties upon 00:00:43
anyone who should presume to burn the 00:00:44
american flag 00:00:47
and they put this law through with a 00:00:48
great deal of patriotic 00:00:50
oratory and quoting of poems and so on 00:00:53
about old glory 00:00:55
ignoring the fact entirely that these 00:00:57
same congressmen 00:00:58
by acts of commission or omission are 00:01:01
burning up that for which the flag 00:01:02
stands 00:01:04
they are allowing the utter pollution of 00:01:06
our waters of our atmosphere 00:01:08
the devastation of our forests and uh 00:01:12
the increasing power of the bulldozer 00:01:17
to bring about a ghastly fulfillment of 00:01:18
the biblical prophecy 00:01:20
that every valley shall be exalted every 00:01:22
mountain laid low in the rough places 00:01:24
plain but you see they don't see they 00:01:27
don't notice 00:01:28
the difference between the flag and the 00:01:30
country whereas kojimsky pointed out 00:01:32
the difference between the map and the 00:01:34
territory 00:01:37
compare a physical globe 00:01:41
and a political globe 00:01:41
the physical globe is a pretty thing with 00:01:47
all kinds of green and brown wiggly 00:01:51
uh patterns on it 00:01:54
the political globe on the other hand 00:01:56
has still got the wiggly outlines of the 00:01:58
land 00:01:59
but they are all crossed over with 00:02:01
colored patches 00:02:03
many of which have completely straight 00:02:05
edges 00:02:06
a lot of the boundary between the united 00:02:08
states and canada once you get 00:02:10
west of the great lakes is simply a 00:02:12
straight line what has that got to do 00:02:13
with anything 00:02:15
with any difference between canadians on 00:02:18
one side of the line or americans on the 00:02:20
other side of the line 00:02:21
or what have you uh it is absolutely 00:02:24
a violation of the surface of the 00:02:27
territory 00:02:28
and look at the fair city of san 00:02:30
francisco 00:02:32
it's a lovely place but they planted on 00:02:36
the hills of san francisco 00:02:40
a city pattern that was appropriate for 00:02:42
the plains of kansas 00:02:44
a gridiron and so you get streets that 00:02:48
go straight up 00:02:49
and that are extremely dangerous where 00:02:51
they should have 00:02:52
followed the contours of the hills now 00:02:55
however i think we should begin 00:02:58
by talking a little bit about when we 00:03:00
use the word physical reality as 00:03:02
distinct from 00:03:03
abstraction what are we talking about 00:03:03
because you see there's going to be a fight about this 00:03:12
philosophically if i say that the 00:03:17
the final reality that we're living in 00:03:20
is the physical world 00:03:22
a lot of people will say that i'm a 00:03:24
materialist that i'm unspiritual 00:03:27
and that uh i think too much of an 00:03:30
identification 00:03:31
of the man with the body 00:03:31
you any any book that you open on yoga or 00:03:38
uh hindu philosophy will have in it 00:03:42
a uh declaration that you start a 00:03:45
meditation practice by saying to 00:03:46
yourself 00:03:48
i am not the body i am not my feelings 00:03:52
i am not my thoughts i am the witness 00:03:55
who watches all this and is not really 00:03:57
any of it 00:04:00
and so if i were to say then that the 00:04:01
physical world is the basic reality 00:04:03
i would seem to be contradicting what is 00:04:06
said in these hindu 00:04:07
texts but um 00:04:12
it all depends on what you mean by the 00:04:14
physical world 00:04:16
what is it first of all it must be 00:04:18
pointed out 00:04:19
that the idea of the material world 00:04:23
is itself philosophical it is in its uh 00:04:26
in its own way a symbol 00:04:29
and so if i take up something that uh is 00:04:32
generally agreed 00:04:33
uh to be something in the material world 00:04:38
and i argue that this is material 00:04:42
of course it isn't 00:04:42
because nobody has ever been able to put their finger on anything 00:04:48
material that is to say if you buy the 00:04:52
word material 00:04:54
you mean some sort of basic stuff out of 00:04:57
which the world is made 00:04:58
by say analogy with the art of ceramics 00:05:01
pottery 00:05:02
uh we use clay and we form it 00:05:06
into various shapes and so a lot of 00:05:08
people think that the 00:05:10
physical world is various forms of 00:05:13
matter 00:05:14
and nobody has ever been able to 00:05:16
discover any matter 00:05:18
they've been able to discover various 00:05:20
forms yes various patterns 00:05:23
but no no matter you can't even think 00:05:28
what you how you would describe matter 00:05:30
in some terms other than form 00:05:33
because whenever a physicist talks about 00:05:35
the nature of the world 00:05:37
he he describes a form he describes a 00:05:40
process 00:05:41
which can be put into the shape of a 00:05:43
mathematical equation 00:05:47
and so if you say a plus b 00:05:50
equals b plus a everybody knows exactly 00:05:53
what you mean 00:05:55
it's a perfectly clear statement but 00:05:57
nobody needs to ask what do you mean by 00:05:59
a or what do you mean by b 00:06:02
or if you say one plus two equals three 00:06:04
that's perfectly clear 00:06:06
but you don't need to know one what to 00:06:08
what or three what 00:06:08
and all our descriptions of the physical world 00:06:14
have the nature of these formulae 00:06:18
numbers 00:06:19
they are simply mathematical patterns 00:06:22
because what we're talking about 00:06:23
is pattern 00:06:24
[Music] 00:06:27
but it's pattern of such a high degree 00:06:30
of complexity 00:06:33
that it's very difficult to deal with it 00:06:34
by thinking 00:06:37
in science uh we really work in two 00:06:41
different ends of the spectrum of 00:06:43
reality 00:06:43
we can deal with problems in which there are very few variables 00:06:47
or we can deal with problems in which there are 00:06:53
almost infinitely many variables 00:06:58
but in between we're pretty helpless in 00:07:02
other words 00:07:02
the average person cannot think through 00:07:05
a problem 00:07:06
involving more than three variables 00:07:07
without a pencil in his hand 00:07:11
that's why for example it's difficult to 00:07:14
learn 00:07:15
complex music think of an organist 00:07:18
who has two keyboards or three keyboards 00:07:21
for work with his hands and each hand is 00:07:24
doing a different rhythm 00:07:26
and then his feet on the pedals he could 00:07:28
be doing a different rhythm 00:07:29
with each foot now that's a different 00:07:32
difficult thing for people to learn to 00:07:33
do 00:07:34
just like to rub your stomach and a 00:07:36
circle and pat your head at the same 00:07:37
time 00:07:38
takes a little skill 00:07:38
now most problems with which we deal with everyday life 00:07:44
involve far more than three variables 00:07:46
and uh we are really incapable of thinking about them 00:07:54
actually the way we think about most of 00:07:57
our problems is simply 00:07:58
going through the motions of thinking we 00:08:01
don't really think about them 00:08:03
we do most of our decision making 00:08:06
by hunch you can collect 00:08:10
data about a decision that you have to 00:08:13
make 00:08:14
but the data that you collect 00:08:14
has the same sort of relation to the actual 00:08:21
processes involved in this decision as a 00:08:26
skeleton to a living body 00:08:30
it's just the bones 00:08:33
and there are all sorts of entirely 00:08:35
unpredictable possibilities 00:08:36
involved in every decision uh you 00:08:39
you don't really think about it at all 00:08:40
the truth of the matter is that um we are as successful as we are which is 00:08:49
surprising 00:08:52
uh the degree to which we are successful 00:08:54
in conducting our everyday practical 00:08:56
lives 00:08:57
because our brains do the thinking for 00:09:00
us 00:09:02
in an entirely unconscio way 00:09:02
the brain is far more complex than any computer the brain is in fact 00:09:11
the most complex known 00:09:16
object in the universe because our 00:09:18
neurologists don't understand it 00:09:20
they have a very primitive conception of 00:09:22
the brain and admit it 00:09:25
and therefore if we do not understand 00:09:28
our own brains that simply shows that 00:09:31
our brains are a great deal more 00:09:32
intelligent 00:09:33
than we are uh meaning by we 00:09:37
the thing that we have identified 00:09:38
ourselves with 00:09:40
instead of being sensible and 00:09:41
identifying ourselves with our brains 00:09:44
we identify ourselves with a very small 00:09:46
operation of the brain 00:09:48
which is the faculty of conscious 00:09:50
attention 00:09:51
which is the sort of radar that we have 00:09:53
that scans the environment for 00:09:56
unusual features and we think we are 00:10:00
that 00:10:00
and we are nothing of the kind that's 00:10:02
just a little uh 00:10:04
little trick we do so 00:10:07
actually we our brain is analyzing 00:10:11
all sensory input all the time 00:10:15
analyzing all the things you don't 00:10:17
notice don't think about 00:10:19
don't have even names for and so it is 00:10:23
this marvelous complex 00:10:25
goings on which is responsible 00:10:28
for our being able to adapt ourselves 00:10:30
intelligently to the rest of the 00:10:32
physical world 00:10:34
the brain is further more in operation 00:10:36
of the physical world 00:10:39
but now you see though we get back to 00:10:41
this question 00:10:43
physical world this is a concept 00:10:48
this is simply an idea 00:10:52
and if you want to ask me to 00:10:54
differentiate 00:10:55
between the physical and the spiritual 00:10:58
i will not put the spiritual 00:11:02
in the same class as the abstract 00:11:05
but most people do 00:11:05
they think that one plus two equals three 00:11:10
is a proposition of a more spiritual 00:11:14
nature 00:11:15
than say for example a tomato 00:11:19
but i think a tomato is a lot more 00:11:21
spiritual than one plus two equals three 00:11:25
this is where we really get to the point 00:11:27
that's why in zen buddhism 00:11:29
when people ask what is the fundamental 00:11:31
principle of buddhism you could very 00:11:32
well answer a tomato 00:11:32
because look how when you examine the material world how 00:11:41
diaphanous 00:11:44
it is it really isn't very solid 00:11:49
a tomato doesn't last very long 00:11:52
nor for that matter do the things that 00:11:54
we consider most 00:11:56
uh exemplary of physical realities such 00:11:59
as 00:11:59
mountains the poet says the hills are 00:12:03
shadows 00:12:03
and they flow from form to form and 00:12:06
nothing stands 00:12:08
because the physical world is diaphanous 00:12:11
it's like music uh when you play music 00:12:14
it simply disappears 00:12:16
there's nothing left and that for that 00:12:19
very reason it is one of the highest 00:12:20
and most spiritual of the arts because 00:12:23
it is the most transient 00:12:25
and so in a way you might say that 00:12:27
transiency 00:12:28
[Music] 00:12:29
is a mark of spirituality a lot of 00:12:32
people think the opposite 00:12:34
that the spiritual things are the 00:12:36
everlasting things 00:12:38
but you see the more a thing tends to be 00:12:41
permanent 00:12:42
the more it tends to be lifeless 00:12:42
[Music] so then uh the the physical world we 00:12:56
can't even find any stuff out of which 00:13:02
it's made 00:13:02
we can only recognize each other and i say well i 00:13:07
realize that i met you before and that i 00:13:11
see you again 00:13:13
but the thing that i recognize is not um 00:13:16
anything really except 00:13:18
a consistent pattern 00:13:21
let's suppose i have a rope 00:13:25
and this rope begins by being manila 00:13:28
rope 00:13:28
then it goes on by being cotton rope 00:13:31
then it goes on with being nylon 00:13:33
then it goes on with being silk 00:13:37
so i tie a knot in the rope 00:13:40
and i move the knot down along the rope 00:13:44
now is it as it moves along the same 00:13:46
knot or a different knot 00:13:48
we would say it was the same because you 00:13:49
recognize the pattern of the knot 00:13:51
but at one point it's manila at another 00:13:53
point it's cotton 00:13:54
another point it's nylon and another 00:13:56
itself and that's just like us 00:14:00
we are recognized by the fact that 00:14:03
one day you face the same way as you did 00:14:07
the day before 00:14:09
and people recognize you're facing 00:14:12
so they say that's john doe or mary 00:14:14
smith but actually the contents of your 00:14:17
face 00:14:19
uh whatever they may be the water the 00:14:21
carbons the chemicals 00:14:23
are changing all the time you're like a 00:14:25
whirlpool in a stream 00:14:27
the stream is doing this consistent 00:14:29
whirlpooling 00:14:30
and we always recognize like at the 00:14:33
niagara 00:14:34
the whirlpool is one of the sites but 00:14:38
the water is always moving on 00:14:42
and this is why it's so spiritual 00:14:46
to be non-spiritual is not to see that 00:14:48
in other words it is to 00:14:50
impose upon the physical world the idea 00:14:52
of thingness 00:14:54
of substantiality that is to be involved 00:14:57
in matter to identify 00:15:00
with the body 00:15:00
to believe in other words that the body is something constant 00:15:06
something tangible 00:15:10
so therefore if you cling to the body 00:15:13
you will be frustrated 00:15:15
so the whole point is that the material 00:15:18
world 00:15:19
the world of nature is marvelous so long 00:15:22
as you don't try to lean on it 00:15:24
and if you don't cling to it you can 00:15:25
have a wonderful time 00:15:27
let's take a very controversial issue 00:15:30
all 00:15:31
spiritual people are generally against 00:15:34
lovemaking 00:15:36
in my point of view yes women can 00:15:39
be a source of evil if you attempt to 00:15:41
possess them 00:15:43
i mean if you can save another person i 00:15:45
love you so much i want to own you 00:15:48
and really tie you down and uh 00:15:51
call you well it's like that poem of 00:15:54
ogden nash 00:15:56
where someone claimed that he loved his 00:15:59
wife so much that he climbed a mountain 00:16:01
and named it after her called it mount 00:16:03
mrs oswald 00:16:03
guinness 00:16:06
and so in other words if you try to possess people 00:16:14
and you make your sexual 00:16:20
passion possessive 00:16:24
in that way then of course you are 00:16:26
trying to cling to the physical world 00:16:29
but you see women are in a way much more 00:16:33
interesting if you don't cling to them 00:16:36
if you let them be themselves and be 00:16:38
free 00:16:40
and uh in my opinion you can have a very 00:16:42
spiritual sex life 00:16:44
if you are not possessive but if on the 00:16:48
other hand you are possessive then 00:16:49
you're in trouble 00:16:51
but you know the average swami won't 00:16:54
agree with that 00:16:57
because he confuses 00:16:57
he by thinking that the body the body that i touch 00:17:05
is something evil he's hung up with it 00:17:12
it's like the story of the two zen monks 00:17:13
who were crossing a river 00:17:15
and uh it was uh the ford 00:17:18
was very deep because of the flood and 00:17:21
there was a girl 00:17:23
trying to get across and one of the 00:17:24
monks immediately picked her up threw 00:17:26
her over his shoulder and carried her 00:17:27
across 00:17:28
put her down on the other side and then 00:17:29
the monks went one where she went 00:17:31
another 00:17:32
and uh the other monk had been in a kind 00:17:35
of 00:17:36
embarrassed silence which he finally 00:17:37
broke and he said do you realize that 00:17:39
you broke 00:17:41
a monastic rule by touching and picking 00:17:43
up a woman like that 00:17:46
and he said oh but i left her on the 00:17:49
other side of the river and you're still 00:17:50
carrying her 00:18:00
so the whole question there nuci is 00:18:03
that uh the the even you can find this 00:18:05
to some extent in some 00:18:08
rather irritable saint 00:18:11
paul 00:18:11
where he speaks of the opposition of the flesh and the spirit 00:18:17
now this word sucks in greek the flesh as he uses it is is a is really as bad 00:18:25
points out it's a spiritual category 00:18:32
in for for the christian you see the 00:18:34
word is made flesh 00:18:37
in christ and uh there will be the 00:18:39
resurrection of the body in the final 00:18:41
consummation 00:18:42
of the universe 00:18:42
so you cannot really in as an orthodox christian 00:18:48
take a uh antagonistic attitude to the 00:18:52
flesh 00:18:53
why vendors and paul take an 00:18:55
antagonistic attitude to the flesh 00:18:58
well you can only save the situation and 00:19:00
make the new testament consistent with 00:19:02
itself 00:19:03
by saying that he meant by the flesh a 00:19:06
certain kind of spiritual category 00:19:09
he didn't mean this because this isn't 00:19:12
flesh 00:19:13
flesh is a concept this is not 00:19:17
[Music] 00:19:18
and so the flesh or you might say 00:19:22
we talk about the sins of the flesh 00:19:25
they have entirely to do with certain 00:19:28
hang-ups 00:19:30
that we have about our 00:19:30
our bodies 00:19:34
and that again is what i would call leaning on 00:19:39
the world exploiting it 00:19:43
when you take as a buddhist you take the 00:19:46
third precept 00:19:47
kamesumichachara vera 00:19:50
yami and it's usually translated i 00:19:54
undertake the precept to refrain from 00:19:55
adultery 00:19:56
it doesn't say anything of the kind 00:19:56
karma is passion therefore is i undertake the precept 00:20:05
not to exploit the passions 00:20:10
[Music] 00:20:12
so in other words uh you you you may be 00:20:15
bored 00:20:15
see and you're feeling sort of empty and 00:20:19
at a loose end and you think well 00:20:21
um i don't know let's go and commit 00:20:23
adultery 00:20:24
i might liven things up see 00:20:28
and and that would be what they call in 00:20:30
zen raising waves when no wind is 00:20:32
blowing 00:20:32
it would be quite a different matter if in a perfectly spontaneous and natural 00:20:39
way 00:20:41
you fell in love with some woman you wouldn't be going out of your way to 00:20:49
get into trouble 00:20:53
it would be appropriate and natural at 00:20:55
the time or in the same way a lot of 00:20:57
people 00:20:58
instead of saying let's commit adultery 00:21:01
when they feel sort of bored they say 00:21:03
let's go and eat something 00:21:05
and so they become fatter and fatter and 00:21:07
fatter because they're filling 00:21:08
the spiritual vacuum in their psyche 00:21:11
with food which doesn't do the job 00:21:15
it uh it's not the function of food to 00:21:18
fill spiritual vacuums 00:21:21
so uh in in this way one exploits 00:21:25
the appetites or the passions 00:21:29
so likewise also the the fifth precepts 00:21:32
suramaria majapa madatana 00:21:34
uh is the list of intoxicating 00:21:38
substances and uh it doesn't say that 00:21:41
you are not going to take them 00:21:43
it says you're not going to be 00:21:44
intoxicated by them 00:21:47
in other words a buddhist may drink but 00:21:49
not get drunk 00:21:51
i don't know how that applies to 00:21:53
psychedelics but 00:21:55
that's another story so 00:21:59
one might say then that we are confused 00:22:01
through and through 00:22:02
about what we mean by the material world 00:22:02
and what i'm first of all doing is i'm just giving a number of 00:22:12
illustrations which show 00:22:16
how confused we are 00:22:16
and let me repeat this to get it clear because it is rather complicated 00:22:23
in the first place we confuse 00:22:26
uh abstract symbols that is to say numbers and words and formulae 00:22:33
with physical events 00:22:40
as we confuse money with consumable 00:22:43
wealth 00:22:45
in the second place we confuse 00:22:49
physical events 00:22:49
the whole class and category of physical events 00:22:55
with matter but matter you see 00:23:00
is an idea it's a concept it's the 00:23:02
concept of stuff 00:23:04
of something solid and permanent that 00:23:06
you can catch hold of 00:23:08
now you just can't catch hold of the 00:23:09
physical world 00:23:09
physical world is the uh most evasive elusive uh 00:23:15
process that there is it will not be 00:23:22
pinned down 00:23:23
and therefore it fulfills all the 00:23:25
requirements of spirit 00:23:25
so what i'm saying then is that the the the non-abstract 00:23:31
world which kojimskiy called unspeakable 00:23:35
which was really a rather good word 00:23:35
is the spiritual world 00:23:39
and the spiritual world isn't something kind of gaseous 00:23:45
abstract formless 00:23:50
in that sense of shapeless it's formless 00:23:53
in another sense 00:23:54
the formless world is the wiggly world 00:23:58
you see it's when we say something is 00:24:00
shapeless 00:24:01
like a cloud what shape has this cloud 00:24:05
you say well it's so vague it's it's 00:24:07
shapeless 00:24:09
that's the real formless world 00:24:12
the formal world is the one that human 00:24:15
beings try to construct all the time 00:24:19
see wherever human beings have been 00:24:20
around you see rectangles 00:24:22
and straight lines because we're always 00:24:25
trying to straighten things out 00:24:28
and so that's the the very mark of our 00:24:30
presence 00:24:32
i don't know why we do it it's always 00:24:34
been a puzzle to me 00:24:36
why architects are always using 00:24:38
rectangles 00:24:40
but the thing is that they make us feel 00:24:43
very uncomfortable if they don't 00:24:46
i have an architect friend who built 00:24:47
somebody a house like a um 00:24:50
a snail shell 00:24:50
and it was a it spiraled in and in and in and in and the john was right at the 00:24:55
center 00:24:57
everybody rebels against this house they just they feel very uncomfortable 00:25:04
usually the furniture doesn't fit 00:25:08
because all furniture is made to fit in 00:25:10
a rectilinear scene 00:25:13
and uh we we're always putting things in 00:25:15
boxes 00:25:17
see all thoughts all words are labels on 00:25:19
boxes 00:25:20
therefore we feel we've got to get 00:25:21
everything boxed 00:25:21
and so we put ourselves in boxes everything is put in boxes 00:25:26
but actually everything else in nature doesn't go that way 00:25:32
as for example the snail doesn't put 00:25:36
itself in a box 00:25:39
the crab doesn't put itself in a box 00:25:42
it has these fascinating gorgeous 00:25:46
objects what is for example more 00:25:48
beautiful 00:25:49
than a conch shell or a lovely scallop 00:25:52
shell 00:25:53
these are gorgeous things we could make 00:25:56
the most delicious 00:25:58
shells out of concrete or plastics 00:25:58
they could be very beautiful and we could distribute ourselves over the 00:26:07
landscape like 00:26:09
shellfish along the seashore 00:26:09
but instead we have to live in boxes there's nothing you can't fight it it's 00:26:16
the system 00:26:19
[Laughter] 00:26:23
so you know then you have to you you 00:26:25
begin to build your furniture and 00:26:27
chairs everything accordingly to these 00:26:29
shapes because they're easy 00:26:31
to store away in a place that is a box 00:26:33
in the first place 00:26:33
but you see then that is this rectilineal world this is unspiritual 00:26:40
this is the world of uh what we will 00:26:48
call the artificial 00:26:50
as distinct from the natural and uh 00:26:54
when we live in a world like that we 00:26:57
begin 00:26:57
to have ourselves bamboozled by it 00:27:01
you think you begin to think that 00:27:03
reality is this sort of straightened out 00:27:06
situation that we all have to live in 00:27:09
and uh you don't remember 00:27:13
that reality is precisely 00:27:16
the wiggly world you see 00:27:20
we don't realize that we are all wiggly 00:27:23
the problem is that we wiggle in rather 00:27:27
the same way 00:27:28
we have head two arms two legs etc 00:27:32
uh but notice how 00:27:36
we do all sorts of things to ourselves 00:27:38
to sort of 00:27:40
evade our wiggliness the way we dress 00:27:44
especially men women are allowed to be a 00:27:48
little bit more curvaceous and wiggly 00:27:49
than men are 00:27:51
it's somewhat appreciated but men go 00:27:53
around in these square-cut 00:27:56
suits and straight pants 00:27:59
they're really these uh clothes that we 00:28:03
wear 00:28:03
in the west are 00:28:03
originally military uniforms do you know that that's why they have buttons on the 00:28:08
sleeve 00:28:12
because you used to have buttons all the 00:28:13
way up the sleeves that people wouldn't 00:28:14
wipe their noses on their sleeves 00:28:14
they were they were livery in other words 00:28:21
and this uniform 00:28:27
is being adopted all over the world i 00:28:30
was in salon 00:28:31
in november and uh the moment i got to 00:28:35
salon i saw the men were going around in 00:28:37
sarongs 00:28:38
with long white shirts over them so i 00:28:42
bought such an outfit uh it was terribly 00:28:45
hot 00:28:46
and therefore this kind of clothing was 00:28:48
extremely comfortable 00:28:49
they wear a sort of a stole usually 00:28:53
yellow or orange 00:28:55
which is a little scarf with fringe 00:28:59
around your neck and it's the most 00:29:02
uh easy wonderful garment for loafing 00:29:05
around him 00:29:07
well i was invited to speak at the 00:29:08
university of ceylon candy 00:29:11
and uh i found when i got there i found 00:29:15
that was very tense atmosphere 00:29:16
because there was a great degree of 00:29:19
anti-american feeling 00:29:21
because we cut off aid and they don't 00:29:24
approve of our behavior in vietnam 00:29:26
and all that kind of thing so i was an 00:29:27
american speaker and 00:29:29
when i appeared they started booing 00:29:33
but i was wearing sinali's clothes 00:29:36
and i got up and said i had an 00:29:38
interpreter who was a very 00:29:40
bright psychology graduate student 00:29:44
and i got up and said um ladies and 00:29:46
gentlemen 00:29:47
and the gentleman incidentally were all 00:29:48
wearing white shirts and pants 00:29:51
[Applause] 00:29:53
and i got up and said ladies and 00:29:54
gentlemen i purposely put on tonight 00:29:56
your national dress for the first reason 00:30:00
it is practical you have developed this 00:30:03
over many hundreds of years as the right 00:30:04
kind of clothes to wear in this climate 00:30:07
and i find it 00:30:09
very suitable the second is it is 00:30:12
properly adapted to male anatomy 00:30:15
and there's a big laugh at this 00:30:18
and the interpreter whispered to me he 00:30:20
said you meant it that way didn't you 00:30:23
i said yes but you know that broke the 00:30:26
ice 00:30:27
and there was no further trouble 00:30:36
but you see uh there's a curious paradox 00:30:40
about this 00:30:42
that that kind of clothing 00:30:45
follows the wiggliness of things 00:30:48
and doesn't contradict it but what is 00:30:50
the paradoxical about it is 00:30:53
that both these sinhalese clothes and 00:30:56
japanese clothes 00:30:57
and um indonesian clothes 00:31:02
don't attempt to violate the nature of 00:31:04
cloth 00:31:06
and they are more rectangular than our 00:31:08
clothes 00:31:09
but they don't look that way when you 00:31:11
put them on 00:31:14
you can take a kimono and fold it 00:31:19
and pack it away and when you unpack you 00:31:22
don't have to 00:31:23
have it oppressed 00:31:23
a uh the sinhalese minister of education's wife 00:31:30
was talking to us about sarees she said 00:31:34
i've got these sarees i can pack 20 00:31:36
sarees into a small suitcase 00:31:38
when i travel i can wear three a day 00:31:42
they're nothing but an enormous piece of 00:31:44
woven material rectilinear 00:31:47
but they feel lucy that since it is the 00:31:49
nature of cloth 00:31:51
to be woven this way and to be 00:31:52
rectilinear you shouldn't violate the 00:31:54
nature of cloth when you make clothes 00:31:58
and so we with all these fitted clothes 00:32:00
that we have 00:32:01
with this extraordinary shoulder work 00:32:05
and uh so on they're impossible to pack 00:32:08
every time you take travel with a 00:32:10
business suit you have to get it pressed 00:32:12
if you want to look decent 00:32:13
and that's true of many women's clothes 00:32:15
too 00:32:15
but by following the nature of cloth and not violating it 00:32:20
the cloth then will follow the nature of 00:32:22
your body 00:32:25
and it will gracefully adapt to it and 00:32:27
hang in just the right way 00:32:28
and uh by as it were respecting 00:32:32
the physical world 00:32:32
in either case it all goes together 00:32:35
but this world is physical world is wiggly 00:32:43
and uh this is the most important thing to realize about it as i've sometimes 00:32:47
said 00:32:50
we're living in the middle of a 00:32:51
rorschach blood 00:32:53
and uh there really is no way that the 00:32:56
physical world is 00:32:58
in other words the the nature of truth i 00:33:00
said in the beginning 00:33:01
somebody had said that thoughts were 00:33:02
made to conceal truth this is this is 00:33:05
the fact 00:33:05
because there is no such thing as the 00:33:08
truth 00:33:10
that can be stated in other words 00:33:13
ask the question what is the true 00:33:15
position of the stars in the big dipper 00:33:15
well it depends where you're looking at them from 00:33:21
and there is no absolute position so in 00:33:27
the same way 00:33:28
uh accountants a good accountant will 00:33:30
tell you that any balance sheet is 00:33:31
simply a matter of opinion 00:33:32
[Music] 00:33:32
uh there's no such thing as a true state of affairs 00:33:40
of us of a business but we're all 00:33:45
hooked on the idea that there is you see 00:33:47
an external 00:33:49
objective world which is a certain way 00:33:52
and that there it really is that way 00:33:54
history for example is a matter of 00:33:56
opinion 00:33:58
uh history is an art not a science 00:34:03
it's something constructed which is 00:34:04
accepted as a more or less satisfactory 00:34:06
explanation of events 00:34:07
which as a matter of fact don't have an 00:34:09
explanation at all 00:34:11
most of what happens in history is 00:34:12
completely irrational 00:34:15
but people always have to feel that 00:34:16
they've got to find a meaning for 00:34:18
example 00:34:19
you get sick and you've lived a very 00:34:22
good life 00:34:23
and you've been helpful to other people 00:34:26
and done all sorts of nice things 00:34:28
and you get cancer and you say to the 00:34:31
part to the clergyman why did this have 00:34:33
to happen 00:34:33
to me and you're looking for an 00:34:36
explanation and there isn't one 00:34:39
it just happened that way 00:34:39
but people feel if they can't find an explanation 00:34:44
they feel very very insecure why 00:34:49
because they haven't been able to 00:34:50
straighten things out 00:34:50
the world is not that way so the truth in other words what is going on is of 00:34:57
course a lot of wiggles 00:35:02
but uh the way it is 00:35:02
is always in relation to the way you are [Music] 00:35:11
in other words however hard i hit a 00:35:17
skinless drum it will make no noise 00:35:20
because noise is a relationship between 00:35:23
a fist and a skin 00:35:23
so in exactly the same way light as a relationship between 00:35:28
electrical energy and eyeballs 00:35:30
it is you in other words who evoke the world 00:35:38
and you evoke the world in accordance 00:35:42
with 00:35:44
what kind of a you you are what kind of 00:35:46
an organism 00:35:47
one organism evokes one world another 00:35:50
organism 00:35:50
evokes another world and so everything 00:35:53
in 00:35:54
reality is is a kind of relationship 00:35:58
so once one gets rid of the idea of the 00:36:01
truth 00:36:02
as some way the world is in a fixed 00:36:05
sense say it is that way 00:36:07
see then you get to another idea of the 00:36:11
truth altogether 00:36:13
the idea the truth that cannot be stated 00:36:16
the truth that cannot be pinned down 00:36:26
[Music] 00:36:31
i might say that i'm interested in 00:36:33
japanese materialism 00:36:35
because contrary to popular belief 00:36:38
americans are not materialists 00:36:41
we are not people who love material but 00:36:45
our culture is by and large 00:36:46
devoted to the transformation of 00:36:49
material into junk 00:36:50
as rapidly as possible god's own 00:36:53
junkyard 00:36:55
and therefore it's a very very important 00:36:57
lesson for a wealthy nation 00:37:00
and for rich people and we are all 00:37:03
colossally rich 00:37:04
by the standards of the rest of the 00:37:06
world 00:37:07
it's very important for such people to 00:37:11
learn and see what happens to material 00:37:15
in the hands of people who love it 00:37:15
we regard matter as something that gets in our way 00:37:21
something whose limitations are to be 00:37:25
abolished as fast as possible 00:37:25
and therefore we have bulldozers and every kind of 00:37:31
technical device for knocking it out of 00:37:35
the way 00:37:37
and we'd like to do as much obliteration 00:37:41
of time and space as possible we talk 00:37:43
about killing time 00:37:45
and getting there as fast as possible so 00:37:48
if you can take a jet plane 00:37:50
from one city to another and everybody's 00:37:52
doing it not just the privileged few 00:37:54
then they're going to be the same town 00:37:56
so to preserve the whole world from 00:37:59
indefinite los angelization 00:37:59
pardon me those of you who are from southern california 00:38:04
but uh we have to learn 00:38:10
in the united states how to enjoy 00:38:13
material 00:38:15
and to be true materialists instead of 00:38:19
exploiters of material well now 00:38:22
basic to all this is the philosophy of 00:38:24
nature and the japanese philosophy of 00:38:26
nature 00:38:28
is probably founded historically in the 00:38:30
chinese philosophy of nature 00:38:32
and that's what i want to go into to 00:38:34
start with to let the cat out of the bag 00:38:37
right at the beginning the assumptions 00:38:39
underlying 00:38:40
far eastern culture and this is true 00:38:44
as far west as india also 00:38:48
is that the whole cosmos the whole 00:38:51
universe 00:38:52
is one being the great men of this 00:38:55
culture 00:38:56
not everybody but the great men the 00:38:58
great masters 00:38:59
whatever sphere they're in are 00:39:01
fundamentally of this feeling 00:39:04
that what you are is the 00:39:08
thing that always was is and will be 00:39:13
only it's playing the game called mr 00:39:15
takano 00:39:16
or mr lee or mr 00:39:19
muka that's a special game it's playing 00:39:24
just like there's the fish game the 00:39:26
grass game the bamboo game the pine tree 00:39:28
game 00:39:28
they're all ways of going 00:39:31
to do you see everything's doing a dance 00:39:34
only it's doing it according to the 00:39:35
nature of the dance 00:39:36
that is fundamentally all these dancers 00:39:39
with a human 00:39:40
fish bird clouds sky dance star dance 00:39:43
etc 00:39:44
they're all one fundamental dance 00:39:47
and so a civilized cultured 00:39:51
above all an enlightened person in this 00:39:53
culture is one 00:39:54
who knows that his so-called 00:39:58
separate personality his ego 00:40:02
is an illusion illusion doesn't mean a 00:40:06
bad thing 00:40:07
it just means a play from the latin word 00:40:10
uh ludery 00:40:11
we get english illusion ludery means to 00:40:13
play 00:40:14
so the sanskrit word maya 00:40:17
meaning illusion also means magic skill 00:40:21
art and this sanskrit conception 00:40:25
comes through china to japan 00:40:29
with the transmission of buddhism 00:40:29
is play so all individual manifestations are games 00:40:40
dances symphonies 00:40:45
musical forms being put on by the whole 00:40:48
show 00:40:49
and everyone is basically the whole show 00:40:52
that's the 00:40:53
fundamental feeling now but nature 00:40:57
nature as the word is used in the far 00:40:59
east doesn't mean quite the same as the 00:41:00
word nature in the west 00:41:02
in chinese nature the word we translate 00:41:06
nature or in japanese 00:41:10
shizen is made up of two characters 00:41:13
that first one means of itself 00:41:17
and the second one means so 00:41:20
what is so of itself 00:41:23
of itself so what happens 00:41:26
as we say what comes naturally 00:41:30
it's in that sense of our word nature to 00:41:33
be natural 00:41:34
to act in accordance with one's nature 00:41:37
not to strive things not to force things 00:41:40
that they they use the word natural 00:41:40
so when your hair grows it grows without your telling it to 00:41:49
and you don't have to force it to grow 00:41:54
so in the same way when the color of 00:41:55
your eyes whether it's blue or brown or 00:41:58
whatever 00:41:59
the eyes color themselves and you don't 00:42:02
tell them how to do it when your bones 00:42:05
grow a certain way 00:42:06
they do it all of themselves 00:42:09
so then uh it's fundamental to this idea 00:42:12
of nature 00:42:12
that the world has no boss god in in much of the western meaning of 00:42:19
the word means the controller 00:42:24
the boss of the world and the model 00:42:27
that we use for nature uh 00:42:32
tends to be the model of the carpenter 00:42:37
or the potter or the king that just as 00:42:40
the carpenter 00:42:41
takes wood and makes a table out of it 00:42:45
or as the potter takes inert clay and 00:42:48
with the intelligence of his hands 00:42:50
evokes the form in it that's how that 00:42:52
idea you see 00:42:53
of the the world as an artifact 00:42:57
could prompt a child in our culture to 00:42:58
say to his mother 00:43:00
uh how was i made and it seems very 00:43:02
natural so when it's explained that god 00:43:04
made you 00:43:05
the child naturally goes on and says but 00:43:07
who made god 00:43:08
but i don't think a chinese child would 00:43:11
ask that question at all 00:43:13
how was i made because the chinese mind 00:43:17
does not look at the world of nature as 00:43:19
something 00:43:19
manufactured but rather grown 00:43:23
the character for coming into being in 00:43:25
chinese 00:43:27
is based on a a symbol of a growing 00:43:30
plant 00:43:31
now growing and making are two different 00:43:33
things 00:43:34
when you make something you assemble 00:43:37
parts or you take a piece of wood 00:43:41
and you carve it working gradually from 00:43:44
the outside inwards 00:43:46
cutting away until you've got the shape 00:43:47
you want 00:43:49
but when you watch something grow it 00:43:51
isn't going like that 00:43:54
if you see for example a fast motion 00:43:57
movie of a rose growing 00:44:01
you will see that the process goes from 00:44:03
the inside to the outside 00:44:05
it is as it was something expanding from 00:44:07
the center 00:44:08
and so far from being an addition of 00:44:10
parts 00:44:12
it all grows together all moves all over 00:44:15
itself 00:44:16
at once because there is in chinese 00:44:19
philosophy 00:44:20
no difference between the tao 00:44:24
that is the word tao in japanese 00:44:27
do there is no difference between the 00:44:31
way 00:44:33
the power of nature and then 00:44:37
the things in nature it isn't you see 00:44:40
when 00:44:40
uh i stir up wind with this fan 00:44:44
it isn't simply that the wind obeys the 00:44:46
fan 00:44:49
there wouldn't be a fan in my hand 00:44:50
unless there were wind around 00:44:52
unless there were air no fan 00:44:55
so the air brings the fan into being as 00:44:58
much as the fan brings the air into 00:44:59
being 00:45:01
loud sir who wrote that supposed to have 00:45:03
written the dao de jing 00:45:05
the fundamental book of the taoist 00:45:08
philosophy 00:45:10
he lived probably a little before 300 00:45:14
bc although tradition makes him a 00:45:16
contemporary of confucius 00:45:18
who lived closer to six hundred 00:45:22
but he says in his book the great dao 00:45:25
flows everywhere 00:45:26
to the left and to the right it loves 00:45:29
and nourishes all things but does not 00:45:32
lord it over them 00:45:34
and when merits are attained it makes no 00:45:38
claim to them 00:45:39
so the corollary of that 00:45:41
[Music] 00:45:43
is that if this is the way nature is run 00:45:46
not by government but by as it were 00:45:50
letting everything follow its course 00:45:50
then the skill for man [Music] 00:45:56
or woman or the skillful ruler or the 00:46:01
sage 00:46:02
interferes as little as possible with 00:46:05
the course of things 00:46:06
the notion is 00:46:06
that life is most skillfully lived when one sails a boat rather than rowing 00:46:13
it 00:46:17
now you see it's more intelligent to 00:46:19
sail than to row 00:46:21
with oars i have to drag i use my 00:46:23
muscles and my effort 00:46:24
to drag myself along the water but with 00:46:27
a sail 00:46:28
i let the wind do the work for me more 00:46:31
skillful still 00:46:32
when i learned to tack and let the wind 00:46:34
blow me against the direction of the 00:46:36
wind 00:46:38
now that's the whole philosophy of the 00:46:38
[Music] 00:46:50
is japanese are pronouncing the chinese 00:46:53
[Music] use effort to go against the grain to 00:47:02
force things 00:47:07
not to go against the grain to go with 00:47:09
the grain 00:47:11
and so you will see around you in every 00:47:13
direction examples of 00:47:15
[Music] 00:47:17
of the intelligent handling of nature 00:47:21
so as to go with it rather than against 00:47:24
it 00:47:25
so it is said in the winter there's a 00:47:28
tough pine tree 00:47:30
which has a branch like this and mussels 00:47:33
and the snow piles up and piles up and 00:47:35
this unyielding branch 00:47:36
eventually has this huge weight of snow 00:47:38
and it cracks 00:47:40
whereas the willow tree has a springy 00:47:43
supple branch 00:47:44
and a little snow comes on it and the 00:47:46
branch just goes down and the snow falls 00:47:47
off and whoops the branch goes up again 00:47:50
so loud sir said 00:47:53
man at his birth is supple and tender 00:47:57
but in death he is rigid hard 00:48:00
plants when they are young are soft and 00:48:02
supple but in death they are brittle and 00:48:04
hard 00:48:06
so suppleness and tenderness are the 00:48:09
characteristics of life 00:48:11
and rigidity and hardness the 00:48:12
characteristics of death 00:48:20
[Music] 00:48:20
first point i've been saying is what they mean by nature 00:48:27
that it is something that happens of 00:48:32
itself that it has no boss 00:48:35
the second point is that it does not 00:48:39
in the sense that it doesn't have a boss 00:48:40
somebody giving orders and somebody 00:48:42
obeying orders 00:48:44
that leads further to an entirely 00:48:46
different conception of cause and effect 00:48:50
cause and effect is based on giving 00:48:51
orders 00:48:53
when you say something made this happen 00:48:58
it had to happen because of what 00:48:59
happened 00:49:01
chinese doesn't think like that his 00:49:05
idea of causality is called 00:49:08
or is he i say the concept which does 00:49:10
duty for our idea of causality 00:49:14
is called mutual arising 00:49:18
stepping back again we have these very 00:49:21
very basic principles then 00:49:23
the world as 00:49:26
nature what happens of itself 00:49:30
is looked upon as a living organism 00:49:30
and it doesn't have a boss because things are not behaving 00:49:39
in response to something that pushes 00:49:43
them around 00:49:44
they are just behaving and it's all one 00:49:47
big behavior only if you want to look at 00:49:50
it from certain points of view 00:49:52
you can see it as if something else were 00:49:55
making some thing happen 00:49:59
but you do that only because you divide 00:50:01
the thing up 00:50:03
so now you say final question is the 00:50:06
nature chaotic 00:50:08
is there no law around here 00:50:12
there is not one single chinese word 00:50:15
that means the law of nature as we use 00:50:17
it 00:50:18
the only word in chinese that means law 00:50:22
as we use it is a word 00:50:22
and this word is a character which represents a cauldron with a knife 00:50:30
beside it 00:50:32
and this goes back to the fact that in very ancient times 00:50:37
when a certain emperor made laws for the 00:50:43
people 00:50:43
he had the laws etched on the 00:50:45
sacrificial cauldrons 00:50:47
so that when the people brought the 00:50:48
sacrifices they would read what was 00:50:50
written on the cauldrons 00:50:52
and so this words but the sages who were 00:50:56
of a taoist 00:50:57
feeling at the time when this emperor 00:50:59
lived said you shouldn't have done that 00:51:01
sir 00:51:02
because the moment the people know what 00:51:03
the law is they develop a literature 00:51:05
spirit 00:51:07
and they'll say well now did you mean 00:51:09
this precisely did you mean that 00:51:11
precisely 00:51:11
we'll find a way of wrangling around it 00:51:14
so they said the 00:51:15
the nature of nature tao is 00:51:19
which means lawless but in that sense of 00:51:22
law 00:51:23
but to say that nature is lawless is not 00:51:26
to say 00:51:27
that it's chaotic and the chinese word 00:51:30
here 00:51:31
for the order of nature is called in 00:51:32
japanese three 00:51:34
chinese 00:51:34
originally meant the markings in jade the grain in wood or the fiber in muscle 00:51:44
now when you look at jade you see it has 00:51:52
this wonderful mottled 00:51:53
markings in it and you know somehow 00:51:57
and you can't explain why those 00:51:59
mottlings are not chaotic 00:52:01
when you look at the patterns of clouds 00:52:04
or the patterns of foam on the water 00:52:07
isn't it astounding they never never 00:52:09
make an aesthetic mistake 00:52:11
look at the way the stars are arranged 00:52:13
why they're not arranged 00:52:15
they're just like they seem to be 00:52:16
scattered through the sky like spray 00:52:20
but would you ever criticize the stars 00:52:22
for being in poor taste 00:52:22
when you look at a mountain range it's perfect 00:52:28
but somehow this spontaneous 00:52:35
wiggly arrangement of nature is quite 00:52:37
different from anything that we would 00:52:39
call a mess 00:52:41
look at an ashtray full of cigarette 00:52:44
butts and screwed up bits of paper 00:52:46
look at some modern painting 00:52:46
where people have gone out of their way to create expensive messes 00:52:51
you see uh they're different 00:52:57
and this is the whole joke that we can't 00:52:59
put our finger on what the difference is 00:53:01
although we jolly well know it 00:53:04
we can't define it if we could define it 00:53:08
in other words if we could define 00:53:10
aesthetic beauty 00:53:13
it would cease to be interesting 00:53:13
in other words if we could have a method which would automatically produce great 00:53:19
artists 00:53:21
anybody could go to school and become a 00:53:23
great artist their work would be the 00:53:25
most boring kind of kitsch 00:53:29
but just because you don't know how it's 00:53:30
done that gives it an excitement 00:53:33
[Music] 00:53:35
and so it is with this there is no 00:53:37
formula that is to say no 00:53:39
sir no rule according to which all this 00:53:42
happens 00:53:44
and yet it's not a mess so this idea of 00:53:47
re 00:53:48
you can translate the word re as organic 00:53:51
pattern 00:53:51
and this re is the word that they use for the order of nature 00:53:58
instead of our idea of law where 00:54:03
the things are obeying something if they 00:54:06
are not obeying a governor in the sense 00:54:08
of god 00:54:09
they are obeying principles like a 00:54:12
street car 00:54:13
do you know that limerick there was a 00:54:15
young man 00:54:16
who said damn 00:54:16
for it certainly seems that i am a creature that moves by determinate 00:54:23
indeterminate grooves i'm not even a bus 00:54:28
i'm a tram 00:54:30
[Laughter] 00:54:33
so that idea of the iron rails along 00:54:38
which the course of life 00:54:39
goes is absent here 00:54:39
and that is why basically this accounts for chinese and japanese 00:54:48
humanism they 00:54:54
work on the supposition that human 00:54:56
nature like all nature 00:54:58
is basically good 00:54:58
uh basically but it's good it's funny good 00:55:05
it's consists in its good bad 00:55:10
it consists in the passions as much as 00:55:12
the virtues 00:55:12
in chinese there's the word run i don't know how it's pronounced in 00:55:19
japanese i write it backwards 00:55:23
how do you pronounce that in japanese 00:55:23
uh this means human-heartedness humaneness not in the sense of being 00:55:34
humane in the sense of being kind 00:55:38
necessarily but of being human 00:55:42
so i say oh he's a great human being 00:55:45
means that's the kind of person 00:55:47
who's not a stuffed shirt who is able to 00:55:50
come off it 00:55:51
who is can talk with you on a man-to-man 00:55:54
basis 00:55:55
who recognizes along with you that he's 00:55:58
a rascal too 00:56:00
and so people men are for example when 00:56:02
they each affectionately call a friend 00:56:04
of theirs 00:56:04
hi your bastard how are you getting on 00:56:06
this is a term of endearment 00:56:06
because they know that he shares with them what i call the element of 00:56:12
irreducible rascality 00:56:17
that we all have so then 00:56:20
if a person has this attitude he's never 00:56:22
going to be an overweening goody-goody 00:56:25
confucius said goody goodies are the 00:56:27
thieves of virtue 00:56:30
because you see if i am right and you 00:56:34
are wrong 00:56:35
and we get into a fight what i'm out to 00:56:38
is a crusader against the wrong and i'm 00:56:40
going to obliterate you 00:56:42
or i'm going to demand your 00:56:44
unconditional surrender 00:56:46
but if i say no i'm not right and you're 00:56:48
not wrong but i happen to want to carry 00:56:50
off 00:56:50
your women you know i lie this girl 00:56:54
you've got the most beautiful girls i'm 00:56:55
going to fight you for 00:56:56
but if i do that i'm going to be very 00:56:58
careful not to kill the girls 00:56:58
in modern war we don't care the only people who are safer in the air force 00:57:04
they're way up there you know or else they've got subterranean caves they're 00:57:13
in you know 00:57:15
women and children be damned they can be 00:57:18
frizzled 00:57:19
with hiroshima bomb but we can sit in 00:57:23
the plane and be safe 00:57:25
so this is inhumane because we are 00:57:29
fighting 00:57:30
ideologically instead of for practical 00:57:33
things like 00:57:34
food and possessions and being greedy 00:57:37
so that's why the confucian would say he 00:57:39
trusts human passions 00:57:41
more than he trusts human virtues 00:57:44
righteousness goodness principles and 00:57:47
all that highfalutin abstractions 00:57:49
let's get down to earth let's come off 00:57:53
so then this is why the kind of man in 00:57:57
whom the kind of nature the kind of 00:57:58
human nature 00:57:59
in which trust is put because you see 00:58:02
look if you are like the christians and 00:58:06
the jews 00:58:07
not so much the jews but mostly the 00:58:09
christians who don't trust human nature 00:58:11
say it's fallen it's evil it's perverse 00:58:11
that puts you in a very funny position because if you say 00:58:18
human nature is not to be trusted you 00:58:22
can't even trust the fact that you don't 00:58:24
trust it 00:58:26
see where you land out you land out in a 00:58:29
hopeless mess 00:58:29
now it's true human nature is not always trustworthy 00:58:36
but you must proceed on the 00:58:40
gamble that is trustworthy most of the 00:58:43
time 00:58:45
or even 51 percent of the time 00:58:48
because if you don't what's your 00:58:50
alternative you have to have a police 00:58:52
state 00:58:52
everybody has to be watched and controlled and then who's going to watch 00:58:56
the police 00:58:58
[Music] a great deal of what we have done by way 00:59:12
of technological development 00:59:17
is based on the idea that man is at war 00:59:19
with nature 00:59:19
and that in turn is based on the idea which is a really a 19th century myth 00:59:26
that intelligence 00:59:33
values love 00:59:36
humane feelings etc exist 00:59:39
only within the borders of the human 00:59:41
skin 00:59:43
and that outside those borders the world 00:59:46
is nothing but a howling waste of blind 00:59:49
energy 00:59:50
rampant libido and total stupidity 00:59:54
this you see is the extreme accentuation 00:59:57
of the platonic christian feeling 01:00:01
of man as not belonging in this world 01:00:04
of being a spirit imprisoned in matter 01:00:08
and it's reflected in our popular 01:00:09
phraseology 01:00:11
i came into this world 01:00:14
i face facts i encounter reality 01:00:18
something that goes boom right against 01:00:20
you like that 01:00:22
but all this is contrary to the facts 01:00:26
we didn't come into this world we grew 01:00:28
out of it 01:00:29
in the same way that apples grow out of 01:00:31
an apple tree 01:00:33
and if apples are symptomatic of an 01:00:35
apple tree 01:00:36
and show that after all this tree apples 01:00:39
when you find a world upon which human 01:00:41
beings are growing 01:00:43
then this world is humane because of 01:00:45
humans 01:00:46
only we seek to deny our 01:00:49
mother and to renounce our origins 01:00:53
as if somehow we were lonely 01:00:56
specimens in this world who don't really 01:00:59
belong here 01:01:00
and who are aliens in an environment 01:01:03
of consisting mostly of rock and fire 01:01:08
and mechanical electronic phenomena 01:01:11
which has no interest in us whatsoever 01:01:13
except uh maybe a little bit in us as a 01:01:17
whole as a species 01:01:19
you've heard all these phrases nature 01:01:21
cares nothing for the individual but 01:01:23
only for the species 01:01:25
nature red in tooth and claw nature is 01:01:28
dog-eat-dog 01:01:29
or as the hindus call it the law of the 01:01:32
sharks 01:01:33
and so also the very popular idea in the 01:01:37
19th century 01:01:39
running over into the common sense of 01:01:40
the 20th 01:01:42
that we belong as human beings on some 01:01:45
very small 01:01:46
unimportant speck of dust on the outer 01:01:50
fringes of a very small galaxy 01:01:53
in the middle of millions and millions 01:01:55
of much more important galaxies 01:01:59
and all this thinking is pure mythology 01:02:02
let me go in a little bit to the history 01:02:04
of it because 01:02:05
it's important for us as westerners to 01:02:07
know something about the history 01:02:09
of the evolution of our own ideas that 01:02:11
brought this state of mind about 01:02:13
we grew up as a culture in a very 01:02:17
different idea 01:02:19
where the universe seen as something in 01:02:23
which the 01:02:23
earth was the center and 01:02:27
everything was arranged around us in the 01:02:30
way that we of course as living 01:02:32
organisms 01:02:33
naturally sea world we see it from a 01:02:35
center 01:02:36
and everything around us and so this 01:02:39
geocentric 01:02:40
of the world was however one 01:02:43
in which every human being was 01:02:46
fantastically in and you were watched 01:02:51
day in day out minute in minute out 01:02:55
by your loving and judging father in 01:02:57
heaven 01:02:57
and you because you have an eternal life are infinitely important in the eyes of 01:03:05
this god 01:03:08
but western people got this uh feeling 01:03:11
that this became too embarrassing 01:03:15
you know how it was as a child when you 01:03:16
were working in school 01:03:18
and the teacher walked around behind 01:03:19
your back and looked over 01:03:21
while you were working and you always 01:03:23
felt put off 01:03:25
and so in exactly the same way it's 01:03:28
embarrassing to feel 01:03:29
that your inmost thoughts and your every 01:03:31
decision is constantly being watched 01:03:34
by a critic however beneficent and 01:03:36
however loving that critic may be 01:03:39
that you are always under judgment to 01:03:42
put this to a person is to bug him 01:03:44
totally 01:03:45
so it was a great relief for the western 01:03:48
world 01:03:49
when we could decide that there was no 01:03:51
one watching us 01:03:53
better a universe that is completely 01:03:56
stupid 01:03:57
than one that is too intelligent 01:03:57
and so it was necessary for our peace of mind and for our relief 01:04:05
that 01:04:08
during the 19th century particularly we 01:04:11
got rid of god 01:04:13
and on then that the universe 01:04:15
surrounding us 01:04:17
was supremely unintelligent and was 01:04:19
indeed a universe in which we 01:04:21
as intelligent beings were nothing more 01:04:23
than an accident 01:04:26
but then having discovered this to be so 01:04:28
we had to 01:04:30
take every conceivable step and muster 01:04:33
all possible energy to make this 01:04:36
accident continue 01:04:38
and to make it dominate the show 01:04:38
so the price which we paid for getting rid of god 01:04:46
was rather terrible it was the price 01:04:51
of feeling ourselves to be 01:04:54
natural flukes 01:04:54
in the middle of a cosmos quite other than ourselves cold alien 01:05:02
and utterly stupid 01:05:10
going along rather mechanically 01:05:10
on rather rigid laws but heartless now so this 01:05:18
attitude provoked in western man 01:05:25
a fury to beat nature into submission 01:05:30
and so we talk about 01:05:33
war against nature 01:05:37
when we climb a mountain like everest we 01:05:39
have conquered everest 01:05:41
when we get our enormous phallic rockets 01:05:44
and boom them out into space 01:05:48
we are conquering space 01:05:48
and all the symbols we use for our conquest of nature are hostile 01:05:54
rockets bulldozers this whole attitude 01:06:05
you see 01:06:05
of dominating it 01:06:05
whereas chinese person might say when you climb a high mountain 01:06:12
you conquer it well why this 01:06:18
unfriendly feeling aren't you 01:06:22
glad the mountain could lift you up so 01:06:24
high in the air so as to enjoy the view 01:06:27
so this technology that we have 01:06:31
developed 01:06:32
in the hands of people who feel hostile 01:06:35
to nature 01:06:36
is very dangerous but the same 01:06:39
technology 01:06:40
in the hands of people who felt that 01:06:43
they belong in this universe 01:06:44
could be enormously creative 01:06:44
but the important thing about this whole uh philosophy of nature and of man's 01:07:07
place in nature 01:07:11
is that this taoist 01:07:15
and later zen buddhist and shinto 01:07:18
feeling about man's place in the world 01:07:21
[Music] 01:07:22
is today corroborated by the most 01:07:26
advanced thinking 01:07:27
in the biological and physical sciences 01:07:31
now i can't stress that too much 01:07:31
science is primarily description accurate description 01:07:41
of what's happening with the idea 01:07:48
that if you describe what is happening 01:07:50
accurately 01:07:51
your way of describing things will 01:07:53
become a way of measuring things and 01:07:56
that this in turn will enable you to 01:07:57
predict 01:07:58
what is going to happen and this will 01:08:00
build you 01:08:01
some measure of control over the world 01:08:05
now the people who are most expert in 01:08:07
describing 01:08:08
and who are most expert in predicting 01:08:11
are the first people 01:08:13
to recognize the limitations of what 01:08:15
they're doing 01:08:18
first of all consider what one has to do 01:08:21
in science 01:08:25
in a very simple experiment in which you 01:08:28
want to study 01:08:29
a fluid in a test tube 01:08:29
and describe what is in that fluid so accurately 01:08:36
that you must isolate that fluid 01:08:41
from what are called unmeasurable 01:08:44
variables 01:08:45
i have a fluid in a test tube and i want 01:08:47
to describe it accurately 01:08:49
but every time the temperature changes 01:08:51
my fluid changes 01:08:53
so i want to keep it free from changes 01:08:56
of temperature 01:08:57
this already implies an air conditioning 01:08:59
system 01:09:01
also i don't want my fluid to be jiggled 01:09:04
because that may alter it so i've got to 01:09:06
protect it 01:09:07
from trucks that go by the lab 01:09:10
and so i have to build a special bump 01:09:13
proof room 01:09:14
where trucks won't jiggle it also i have 01:09:17
to be very careful that when i look at 01:09:19
this fluid 01:09:20
i won't breathe on it and affect it in 01:09:22
that way 01:09:23
and that the temperature of my body as i 01:09:26
approach it won't alter it 01:09:28
and i suddenly discover that this fluid 01:09:31
in a test tube 01:09:32
is the most difficult thing to isolate 01:09:36
in all the world because everything i do 01:09:39
about it affects it 01:09:39
i cannot take that fluid in a test tube and take it out of the rest of the 01:09:46
universe and so it is separate 01:09:50
and all by itself 01:09:50
as scientist is the first to notice this furthermore 01:09:57
he knows not only that it is his bodily 01:10:01
approach 01:10:02
that alters things he finally discovers 01:10:05
in studying 01:10:06
quantum theory that looking at things 01:10:09
changes them 01:10:10
so when we study the behavior of electrons and all those subatomic 01:10:16
particles 01:10:22
we find out that the means we use to 01:10:24
observe them 01:10:26
changes so that we what we really 01:10:29
want to know is what are they doing when 01:10:32
we're not looking at them 01:10:35
does the light in the refrigerator 01:10:36
really go out when you close the door 01:10:40
so what all that is telling us is you 01:10:43
cannot 01:10:43
stand aside as an independent observer 01:10:46
of this world 01:10:48
because you the observer are what you're 01:10:51
observing 01:10:52
now how will you tell how would you say 01:10:56
what an ant is doing 01:10:56
without describing at the same time 01:11:00
the field or the environment in which the ant is doing it 01:11:07
you can't say that an ant is walking 01:11:10
if all you can describe is that this amp is just wiggling legs 01:11:18
you have to describe the ground over which the ant is walking 01:11:24
to describe walking you have to set up 01:11:27
directions points of the compass 01:11:30
and so you soon discover that although 01:11:33
you thought you were talking about an 01:11:34
ant 01:11:37
what you're actually talking about 01:11:40
is an ant environment 01:11:45
a total situation 01:11:48
from which the ant is inseparable 01:11:52
so too human behavior 01:11:56
involves first of all the description of 01:11:59
the social context in which human beings 01:12:01
do things 01:12:02
you can't uh describe the behavior of an 01:12:05
individual 01:12:06
except in the context of a society 01:12:11
you have to describe his language 01:12:14
indeed in making a description i have to 01:12:17
use language which i didn't invent 01:12:20
but language is a social product 01:12:23
then beyond human society there is the 01:12:26
whole environment of the birds the bees 01:12:28
and the flowers 01:12:29
the oceans the air and the stars and our 01:12:32
behavior 01:12:32
is always in relation to that enormous environment this gives us 01:12:39
at first as westerners a sense 01:12:46
of frustration 01:12:50
because we say it sounds fatalistic 01:12:50
it sounds as if we were saying you thought you were an independent 01:12:57
organism 01:13:01
you're nothing of the kind your 01:13:04
environment pushes you around 01:13:07
but that idea simply 01:13:11
if we would express that idea as a 01:13:13
result of hearing what i've just said 01:13:15
it would mean that we didn't understand 01:13:16
it 01:13:18
you read bf skinner the supreme 01:13:21
behaviorist psychologist and he 01:13:25
describes 01:13:25
all phenomena of nature in terms of man 01:13:29
being pushed around but let's suppose 01:13:32
that we live in a world where things 01:13:35
don't get pushed around 01:13:38
and can't be pushed around 01:13:41
supposing there's no puppet 01:13:44
supposing there is no cause 01:13:48
and no effect that instead of things 01:13:51
being pushed around 01:13:52
they are just happening the way they do 01:13:55
happen 01:13:55
then you get an utterly different view 01:13:58
and this is the view with which we are dealing 01:14:04
lying behind this culture 01:14:08
[Music] 01:14:09
as i said this morning there is no boss 01:14:12
you as a human being are not going to 01:14:15
push this world around 01:14:16
[Music] 01:14:18
but equally you're not going to be 01:14:20
pushed around by it 01:14:22
it goes with you the external world goes 01:14:25
with you 01:14:26
in just the same way as a back goes with 01:14:28
the front 01:14:28
[Music] 01:14:30
how would you know what you meant by 01:14:31
yourself unless you knew what you meant 01:14:33
by other 01:14:35
how would the sun be light 01:14:39
if you didn't have eyes 01:14:42
how would vibrations in the air be noisy 01:14:46
if you didn't have ears 01:14:46
how would rocks be hard if you didn't have soft skin 01:14:52
how would they be heavy if you didn't 01:14:57
have muscles 01:14:58
so that the way you are constituted the 01:15:00
way your organism is formed 01:15:03
calls into being the phenomena of light 01:15:06
and sound and weight and color and smell 01:15:10
there is a koan in zen buddhism what is 01:15:13
the sound of one hand 01:15:13
there's a chinese proverb that says one hand does not make a clap 01:15:19
so if two hands clap make the clap what is the sound of one hand 01:15:26
you see what a silly question 01:15:31
and yet everybody is trying to 01:15:35
play a game in which one side will win 01:15:40
and there can be one hand clapping 01:15:45
to get rid of the opposite 01:15:48
life get rid of darkness 01:15:52
most of you i am sure here on the whole 01:15:55
identify yourself with the nice people 01:15:55
in other words uh you live uh fairly respectable lives and you look 01:16:03
down upon 01:16:07
various other people who are not nice 01:16:11
and there are various kinds of not nice 01:16:12
people in sausalito where i live they're 01:16:15
called beatniks 01:16:17
they're people who wear beards and who 01:16:19
live along the waterfront 01:16:21
and who don't follow the ordinary 01:16:24
marriage customs 01:16:25
and who probably smoke marijuana instead 01:16:28
of drinking alcohol 01:16:29
because alcohol is the drug for nice 01:16:32
people 01:16:35
now 01:16:35
what the nice people don't realize is that they 01:16:41
need the nasty people think of all the 01:16:45
conversation 01:16:47
at dinner table that you would miss if 01:16:49
you didn't have the nasty people to talk 01:16:51
about 01:16:51
who how would you know who you were unless you could compare yourselves with 01:16:56
those who are on the out 01:17:00
how do those in the church who are saved 01:17:03
know who they are 01:17:04
unless they have the damn why saint 01:17:06
thomas aquinas fed it out of the bag and 01:17:08
said 01:17:09
that in heaven the saints would look 01:17:10
over the battlements of heaven 01:17:12
and enjoy the just sufferings of the 01:17:14
souls in hell 01:17:16
jolly won't it be to watch your sister 01:17:17
squirming down there 01:17:19
while you're in bliss 01:17:19
but uh that was letting the cat out of the bed 01:17:25
because the in-group can't exist 01:17:29
without the art group now in my 01:17:32
community in sausalito 01:17:34
where the out group are sort of beatniks 01:17:38
they in their term know that they are 01:17:40
the real improve 01:17:43
now that up on the hill those squares 01:17:46
who are so dumb that they waste all 01:17:49
their days 01:17:50
earning money by dull work to buy 01:17:54
pseudo riches such as cadillacs 01:17:58
and houses with mowed lawns 01:18:02
and wall-to-wall carpeting which they 01:18:04
despise 01:18:04
they feel very very much collective ego strength 01:18:10
by being able to talk against the 01:18:13
squares because the out group 01:18:15
makes itself the in group by putting the 01:18:17
in group in the position of an armed 01:18:18
group 01:18:20
but both need the other one 01:18:20
this is the meaning of saying love your enemies 01:18:27
and pray for them that despitefully use 01:18:30
you because you need them 01:18:30
you don't know who you are without the contrast 01:18:38
so love your competitors and pray for 01:18:44
them that undercut your prizes 01:18:46
[Laughter] 01:18:46
you go together you have a symbiotic relationship 01:18:54
even though it be formally described as 01:18:58
a conflict 01:19:00
of interest now to see 01:19:03
that kind of thing is the essence 01:19:07
of this philosophy of nature it goes 01:19:09
together with the idea of the yang and 01:19:11
the yin 01:19:13
that we don't know what the yang is the 01:19:15
positive 01:19:16
the bright side unless we at the same 01:19:18
time know what the yin is 01:19:20
which is the dark side these things 01:19:23
define each other mutually 01:19:23
well now if i say it in words you can probably follow my meaning 01:19:34
and realize that all this is very true 01:19:38
from a theoretical point of view 01:19:50
[Music] 01:19:50
[Music] 01:20:20
you 01:21:10