Subtitles
[Music] 00:00:00
i don't know what i want but when you don't know what you want 00:00:09
you've reached the state of 00:00:10
desirelessness 00:00:14
when you really don't know but you see there's a there's a beginning 00:00:22
stage of not knowing and there's an 00:00:24
ending stage of not knowing in the 00:00:26
beginning stage you don't know what you 00:00:27
want because you haven't thought about 00:00:28
it 00:00:29
or you've only thought superficially 00:00:32
then when you somebody forces you to 00:00:33
think about it and go through and say 00:00:35
yeah i think i'd like this i think i 00:00:37
like that i think i'd like the other 00:00:38
as the middle stage then you get beyond 00:00:41
that 00:00:41
say is that what i really want in the 00:00:44
end you say 00:00:46
no i don't think that's it i might be 00:00:50
satisfied with it for a while and i 00:00:51
wouldn't turn my nose up at it 00:00:54
but it's not really what i want why 00:00:55
don't you really know what you want 00:00:55
two reasons that you don't really know what you want 00:01:03
number one you have it 00:01:04
number two 00:01:09
you don't know yourself because you never can 00:01:17
the godhead is never an object of its own knowledge 00:01:24
just as a knife doesn't cut itself fire 00:01:27
doesn't burn itself 00:01:29
light doesn't illumine itself 00:01:32
it's always an endless mystery to itself 00:01:35
i don't know and this i don't know 00:01:39
other than the infinite interior 00:01:42
of the spirit 00:01:42
this i don't know 00:01:48
is the same thing as i love i let go i don't try to force or control 00:01:55
it's the same thing as humility and so the upanishads say 00:02:08
if you think that you understand brahman you do not understand and you have yet 00:02:16
to be instructed further if you know 00:02:23
that you do not understand 00:02:24
then you truly understand for the 00:02:27
brahmana 00:02:28
is unknown to those who know it and 00:02:30
known to those who know it not 00:02:30
and the principle is that any time you as it were 00:02:42
voluntarily let up control in other 00:02:48
words cease to cling to yourself 00:02:51
you have an access of power 00:02:51
because you're wasting energy all the time in self-defense 00:02:57
trying to manage things trying to force things to conform to your will 00:03:02
the moment you stop doing that that 00:03:06
wasted energy is available 00:03:06
therefore you are in that sense having that energy available 00:03:12
you are one with the divine principle 00:03:15
you have the energy 00:03:17
when you're trying however to act as if 00:03:20
you were god 00:03:21
that is to say you don't trust anybody 00:03:23
and you're the dictator and you have to 00:03:24
keep everybody in line 00:03:25
you lose the divine energy because what 00:03:28
you're doing is simply defending 00:03:30
yourself 00:03:32
so then the principle is the more you 00:03:34
give it away 00:03:36
the more it comes back now you say i 00:03:39
don't have the courage to give it away 00:03:41
i'm afraid 00:03:41
and you can only overcome that by realizing 00:03:49
you better give it away because there's 00:03:53
nowhere holding on to it 00:03:53
the meaning of the fact you see that everything is dissolving constantly that 00:03:59
we're all falling apart 00:04:02
we're all in a process of constant death 00:04:05
and that uh the world we hope men set 00:04:07
their hearts upon turns ashes or it 00:04:09
prospers and like snow upon the desert's 00:04:11
dusty face lighting a little hour to his 00:04:13
dawn you know all that omar kyan jazz 00:04:13
you know the cloud cat towers the gorgeous palaces the great globe itself 00:04:21
i all which it inherits shall dissolve 00:04:25
and like this insubstantial pageant 00:04:27
faded leave not a rack behind 00:04:29
all falling apart everything is 00:04:32
that's the the great assistance to you 00:04:35
see that that fact that everything is in 00:04:37
decay is your helper 00:04:40
that is allowing you that you don't have 00:04:43
to let go 00:04:44
because there's nothing to hold on to 00:04:47
it's achieved for you in other words by the process of nature 00:04:53
so once you see that uh you just don't 00:04:58
have a prayer 00:04:59
and it's all washed up and that you 00:05:02
will vanish and leave not a rack behind 00:05:02
and you really get with that suddenly you find you have the power 00:05:10
this enormous access of energy 00:05:16
but it's not power that came to you 00:05:19
because you grabbed it 00:05:21
came in entirely the opposite way and 00:05:24
power that comes to you 00:05:25
in that opposite way is power 00:05:30
with which you can be trusted 00:05:30
of course what we've been talking about is not so much a set of ideas 00:05:39
as an experience or shall we say 00:05:45
experiencing 00:05:45
and this kind of seminar in comparison with the 00:05:53
encounter groups or workshops of various 00:05:59
kinds 00:06:00
or experiments in sensory awareness 00:06:04
is now being called a conceptual seminar 00:06:04
although i'm not talking about concepts 00:06:09
but the crucial question arises that 00:06:21
an understanding a real feeling understanding 00:06:27
of the polar relationship between the individual and the world 00:06:33
is something that operates as we say in your bones 00:06:40
and isn't just a view that you hold or a belief that you hold 00:06:47
it's so curious that the emphasis of the western tradition in religion 00:06:54
is primarily upon right belief do you believe in the right dogmas and 00:07:02
the right doctrines 00:07:05
and only secondarily upon right action 00:07:09
because what you believe is in christianity at any rate far more 00:07:17
important than what you do 00:07:23
because one is saved through faith not 00:07:24
by works 00:07:24
and early in its history the christian church re 00:07:31
rejected the movement in the church 00:07:35
which had been known as gnosticism 00:07:39
from the greek gnosis which means 00:07:42
knowledge 00:07:44
and in a way there were some sound 00:07:45
reasons for doing so 00:07:46
because the gnostics 00:07:49
were what i would call anti-materialists 00:07:52
they divided human beings into three classes 00:07:59
that were called respectively 00:08:00
pneumatic psychic and hylic the last one being 00:08:08
h y l i c from the greek 00:08:16
highly or they would call it now 00:08:19
elay meaning would 00:08:19
so the people were spiritual 00:08:24
psychological and wooden 00:08:28
and uh that is to say the wooden people were those most absorbed in materiality 00:08:36
and most closely identified with their 00:08:42
bodies 00:08:42
and orthodox christianity rejected this sort of distinction 00:08:49
because of the perfectly correct idea that material existence 00:08:57
is not inconsistent with spirituality 00:09:00
this is something which most christians have forgotten 00:09:07
but they do believe as the central 00:09:12
principle of christianity in what's 00:09:13
called the incarnation 00:09:16
that in uh the jesus of nazareth 00:09:20
almighty god did in fact become material 00:09:23
become human and by this process 00:09:29
initiated a transformation of the cosmos 00:09:34
in the words of saint athanasius 00:09:37
god became man that man might become god 00:09:41
and you don't hear that from the pulpit 00:09:42
very often 00:09:42
the christian church therefore emphasized 00:09:49
justice or faith as against gnosis or 00:09:54
knowledge 00:09:54
because they said you can never know god god could never 00:10:01
become an object of knowledge 00:10:04
and in this funny roundabout way the christian theologians were saying 00:10:14
exactly the same thing as the hindus 00:10:15
only the hindus do call this knowledge of god through faith 00:10:24
they call it which is the same as the 00:10:32
greek word gnosis 00:10:32
but just to give you a little side light on how words get mixed up 00:10:37
in their meanings we now have a class of 00:10:42
person called an agnostic 00:10:46
and an agnostic generally means a person 00:10:50
who doesn't commit himself to any 00:10:52
beliefs about the ultimate nature of 00:10:54
things 00:10:55
he just says he doesn't know 00:10:55
but the original word agnosia in greek meant a special kind of 00:11:03
knowledge 00:11:09
it was called the dark knowledge of god 00:11:12
the knowledge of god in the cloud of 00:11:14
unknowing 00:11:15
to use the title of a mystical treatise 00:11:19
written by an anonymous 14th century 00:11:21
english monk 00:11:23
this monk derived his ideas from a very 00:11:26
mysterious figure 00:11:28
who wrote under the name of dionysus the 00:11:31
areopagite 00:11:31
dionysius was a fifth or sixth century syrian monk 00:11:37
who had learned his mysticism from 00:11:44
porphyry 00:11:46
who got it from plotinus who was a 00:11:49
neoplatonist 00:11:51
and who probably got a great deal of 00:11:55
stimulation from the intellectual world 00:11:58
of alexandria 00:12:00
and alexandria in the early years of the 00:12:03
christian era 00:12:05
was a tremendous exchange place between 00:12:09
east and west 00:12:09
buddhist monks visited alexandria it was uh one of the great centers of trade 00:12:16
between rome and india 00:12:21
and as you may know all rome's gold 00:12:25
eventually went to india 00:12:26
for the purchase of pepper 00:12:26
and as a result of this the roman economy collapsed 00:12:32
they bought too much luxury from india 00:12:38
india in exchange got roman architecture 00:12:42
and uh you'll see a lot of roman 00:12:43
architecture in indian temples 00:12:44
but alexandria was the great center for the gnostics and for christian 00:12:54
theology 00:12:58
and some of the greatest theologians 00:13:00
clement 00:13:01
origen athanasius 00:13:04
saint cyril all worked out of alexandria 00:13:10
but now going back to this strange monk 00:13:12
dionysus 00:13:12
it was he who first put around the idea in christian circles that there was such 00:13:20
a thing of the knowledge as the 00:13:25
knowledge of god by faith 00:13:25
by agnosia really by unknowing and he in a book which he wrote very 00:13:33
short book called the theologian mystica 00:13:40
he wrote a treatise on the higher 00:13:42
knowledge of god 00:13:44
which might be quoted directly from the 00:13:47
upanishads 00:13:48
in certain parts of it the last section 00:13:51
of it reads like the mandukyo punishable 00:13:54
because it's a series of negations 00:13:58
it says what god is not 00:13:58
and he goes very far because he says that god 00:14:03
is not one he says our idea of unity 00:14:11
falls far short of what god is so does 00:14:14
our idea of trinity 00:14:16
so does our idea of spirit our idea of 00:14:19
mind 00:14:19
of justice of love all these things 00:14:24
are not really god 00:14:27
and he says in another place if anybody 00:14:29
having seen god 00:14:31
understood what he had seen what he 00:14:33
would have seen would not have been god 00:14:35
but some creature of god less than god 00:14:38
some sort of angel or something like 00:14:38
that it's perfectly amazing to consider the 00:14:44
influence that this man had 00:14:50
for writing under the name of dionysus 00:14:51
the areopagite 00:14:53
he became identified you see with saint 00:14:56
paul's first convert in athens 00:14:58
and legend has it that he was the first 00:15:01
bishop of athens 00:15:02
and was martyred in gaul 00:15:05
now where he's known as saint denis 00:15:05
but some thomas aquinas looked upon the writings of dionysus the ariata guide as 00:15:12
having the highest authority and you 00:15:17
could if all the texts of dionysus's 00:15:19
work had been lost 00:15:21
you could restore most of it from 00:15:23
quotations in some thomas 00:15:23
he wrote really two very important books one was the one i said the theologian 00:15:31
mystica 00:15:35
the other was called the divine names 00:15:39
and these two books presented the two 00:15:40
phases of his theology 00:15:43
the book called the divine names was a 00:15:45
discussion on the nature of god 00:15:48
in terms of what god is like 00:15:52
by analogy and this kind of knowledge of 00:15:55
god he called 00:15:56
kataphatic 00:15:56
from the greek femi to speak or say qatar meaning to say according to that 00:16:02
is to say to speak 00:16:06
by analogy where he used though entirely 00:16:10
negative language about god 00:16:13
this sort of discourse was called 00:16:14
apophatic 00:16:17
and the word apo meaning away from to 00:16:19
talk away from 00:16:21
just as a sculptor when he makes an 00:16:23
image 00:16:25
reveals the image by removing stone 00:16:30
and so dionysus explained that one 00:16:34
attains the knowledge of god by 00:16:37
discarding concepts 00:16:40
which is exactly what the hindus mean 00:16:42
when they say 00:16:43
uh of god one can only say neti neti 00:16:47
not this not this not any conception 00:16:51
thus in hindu philosophy the highest 00:16:54
state of consciousness in samadhi 00:16:56
is called nirvikalpa samadhi 00:16:59
which means literally non-conceptual 00:17:03
the calper means a concept near is a 00:17:05
negation 00:17:07
so the non-conceptual knowledge 00:17:07
now people have greatly misunderstood this 00:17:13
they have imagined that unknowing the 00:17:18
state of the highest contemplation 00:17:21
was the acquisition of a blank mind 00:17:21
from which you first discarded thought you went on to discard perception you 00:17:30
went on to discard 00:17:34
any kind of sensory content 00:17:40
in awareness until you were 00:17:43
so far as anyone could say aware of 00:17:45
nothing 00:17:46
and they supposed that this kind of catatonic state was mystical 00:17:52
consciousness 00:17:55
this is often believed in india if you go to the vedanta society and ask 00:18:02
what do you mean 00:18:05
by nirvikalpa samadhi they will tell you 00:18:08
that the one in that state 00:18:11
has no consciousness whatsoever of the 00:18:13
sensory world 00:18:16
that he's completely absorbed as you 00:18:18
sometimes see 00:18:19
hindu holy men sitting in a state 00:18:22
where they are blind and deaf 00:18:26
to everything going on around them 00:18:26
the founder of chinese zen 00:18:32
known as huaynung described people like that as no better than pieces of rock 00:18:41
and lumps of wood 00:18:45
he said it's a very serious mistake 00:18:47
indeed to confuse 00:18:50
sunyata the sanskrit word for the great 00:18:53
void 00:18:55
which is both the ultimate reality and 00:18:58
the consciousness thereof 00:19:00
it is a great mistake to confuse it with 00:19:02
nothingness 00:19:02
it is rather to be thought of as space or like space 00:19:07
because space is not empty 00:19:13
it contains the whole universe 00:19:16
and so in the same way the state of mind 00:19:18
of a person who is truly enlightened 00:19:21
is not empty it contains 00:19:26
everything 00:19:26
but like space it is not stained by what it contains 00:19:32
and it's often said in zen imagery you 00:19:38
can't hammer a nail into space 00:19:42
you can't spit on the sky and soil it 00:19:45
if you try the spit will just return and 00:19:47
hit your own face 00:19:47
so they go on to say the consciousness in all of us 00:19:53
your basic mind is like space it is 00:19:58
completely pure 00:20:00
but of course by purity they don't mean 00:20:07
which is of course what purity generally 00:20:10
means 00:20:11
in the western world blessed are the 00:20:13
pure in heart for they shall see god 00:20:15
a person who's pure in heart is 00:20:17
generally understood as one who never 00:20:19
has any naughty thoughts 00:20:19
you know what naughty means 00:20:23
means vain negative empty a naughty person therefore is one who it 00:20:32
doesn't amount to anything it's just 00:20:36
nothing 00:20:36
that's the real meaning 00:20:38
but uh 00:20:42
this misunderstanding of the nature of contemplation 00:20:48
existed not only in india from which it 00:20:53
was transmitted to china 00:20:55
but also in the west you read many 00:20:59
treatises on western mysticism 00:21:02
and the still the feeling that getting 00:21:03
into a deep deep trance 00:21:07
sometimes called rapture again the word 00:21:10
rapture 00:21:12
has undergone some transformations we 00:21:15
talk about rapture 00:21:16
as people being beside themselves with 00:21:19
pleasure 00:21:21
but to be wrapped means to be taken away 00:21:25
from the body so also ecstasy 00:21:29
we now interpret as meaning uh in a 00:21:31
state of high pleasure 00:21:33
but it means to be outside yourself to 00:21:36
stand outside yourself your soul has 00:21:38
left you it is with god 00:21:40
as arabs say of all crazy people be kind 00:21:43
to them 00:21:44
they are not here their soul is with god 00:21:44
but actually if it can be true as buddhists say 00:21:52
that nirvana and samsara are one 00:21:59
and if it can be true as christians say 00:22:02
that the spirit 00:22:04
can be made flesh the word can be made 00:22:06
flesh 00:22:08
then obviously the highest form of man 00:22:11
is 00:22:11
not sitting in a trance like a lump on a 00:22:14
log 00:22:15
with a perfectly blank mind 00:22:18
because if that were the highest state 00:22:20
of consciousness 00:22:22
it would be an exclusive state of mind 00:22:25
a state of mind that shuts out life 00:22:26
and in that sense it could not qualify for being what the hindus call 00:22:32
non-dualistic they always speak of the 00:22:38
highest reality as being 00:22:39
not one because one excludes many 00:22:43
not nothing because nothing excludes 00:22:46
something 00:22:47
not being because being excludes 00:22:49
non-being and vice versa 00:22:51
and so they use this word non-dual to 00:22:54
mean that which doesn't exclude anything 00:22:57
which as it were has no outside 00:23:00
as we say space has no outside you can 00:23:03
only have outsides inside space 00:23:06
you can't have any outsides outside 00:23:08
space there is no outside 00:23:10
space even though space may be curved 00:23:13
and finite 00:23:13
so if you want to think incidentally of that uh 00:23:23
curved space go and take a look at uh 00:23:27
photograph 00:23:28
in um the life 00:23:31
a book on mathematics where there's a 00:23:33
picture of a klein bottle 00:23:36
which is a three-dimensional mobius 00:23:37
strip 00:23:39
maybe a strip you know is a piece of 00:23:41
paper that is twisted once and then 00:23:43
joined 00:23:44
and it has only one side and only one 00:23:46
edge 00:23:48
our klein bottle is a three-dimensional 00:23:50
mobius strip 00:23:51
and it only has one inside it has no 00:23:53
outside 00:23:54
you can say it has an inside and no 00:23:55
outside or it has an outside and no 00:23:57
inside 00:23:58
it's a fabulous little little trick but 00:24:01
something like that would be the nature 00:24:02
of space 00:24:04
as that which does indeed transcend the 00:24:07
opposites 00:24:07
um not quite now we'd have to do one extra move on a serpent to make it into 00:24:14
a klein bottle 00:24:19
uh you'd have to tuck its head through 00:24:21
the ins 00:24:22
through the side of its skin 00:24:22
and make the aperture through the mouth continuous with the 00:24:29
inside of the serpent 00:24:33
towards the tail you see 00:24:33
that's more or less what a climb bottle is 00:24:38
so uh 00:24:40
what i'm getting to i'm giving you something out of the general history of 00:24:46
religions 00:24:50
to show that what has been meant by the 00:24:53
mystical state the state of samadhi or 00:24:57
awakening in certain traditions 00:25:01
is not this state of trance 00:25:04
but a state of consciousness in which 00:25:06
you can perfectly well carry on your 00:25:08
daily affairs 00:25:10
and of course what is meant by a 00:25:11
bodhisattva 00:25:13
as the ideal type of buddhist 00:25:16
person is that he is not wrapped 00:25:20
that he is actively engaged in the life 00:25:24
of the world 00:25:25
because he has gone beyond the illusion 00:25:28
that nirvana is to be found 00:25:30
away from everyday life 00:25:30
so what is then the point of meditation why meditate why do you have to crawl up 00:25:38
into a hole 00:25:42
or go to a zen monastery or retire and 00:25:45
be quiet 00:25:47
when this is only a withdrawal 00:25:47
is there anything to be said for it or meditation is in there in that sense 00:25:57
as a practice as a discipline is a very 00:26:01
curious problem 00:26:01
because from one point of view it's a help 00:26:06
and from another point of view a 00:26:09
hindrance 00:26:09
and i think we have to understand first of all that meditation exercises 00:26:14
are medicinal rather than dietary 00:26:20
the same could be said of lsd 00:26:24
a medicine not a diet 00:26:27
something that is described in zen 00:26:30
as when you want to open the door or 00:26:33
summon someone to open the door for you 00:26:35
you pick up a brick and you knock on the 00:26:36
door but you don't carry the brick into 00:26:39
the house 00:26:39
when you need a raft for crossing a stream you cross the stream on the raft 00:26:43
but you leave the raft on the bank 00:26:47
at the other side you don't go carrying 00:26:48
it around 00:26:48
but a lot of people when they get into meditation or they get into religion 00:26:53
or into any kind of exploration of this 00:27:00
sort 00:27:01
turn the door into a revolving door 00:27:05
and keep on going round and round and 00:27:06
round and never get through 00:27:08
they say what a gas it is to be in this 00:27:10
revolving door so maybe a good 00:27:12
definition of a parasite 00:27:13
is the person who goes through a 00:27:14
revolving door on someone else's push 00:27:21
so there are all sorts of people in the 00:27:23
religious 00:27:25
racket who are going through revolving 00:27:28
doors 00:27:30
and they're very bitter about people who 00:27:32
walk right through and leave the door 00:27:33
behind because they say well you 00:27:34
haven't paid enough respect you must 00:27:37
really understand religious 00:27:38
one-upmanship 00:27:39
it's a tremendously important thing 00:27:39
and don't be caught out by this because what happens is 00:27:45
there's a little game going on which i'm 00:27:49
going to initiate you into 00:27:51
and it's played in zen which is 00:27:51
it works like this if you go to a teacher 00:28:03
and ask for spiritual instruction or 00:28:08
even if you come to a seminar like this 00:28:08
you are by doing that confusing yourself because you are 00:28:17
looking for what you're asking for 00:28:21
outside as if someone else could give it 00:28:24
to you 00:28:24
as if you didn't have it 00:28:24
so the teacher knows that as long as you do that 00:28:30
you haven't understood 00:28:33
but he doesn't just tell you to go away or we may sometimes to say go away i'm 00:28:41
too busy 00:28:45
and i mean in any case i can't tell you 00:28:47
anything 00:28:47
well people won't take that for an answer they won't take no for an answer 00:28:51
and furthermore if he just said go away they would just find some other teacher 00:29:00
who would exploit them and uh maybe keep 00:29:06
them as followers for years 00:29:08
and acquire a great deal of money by so 00:29:10
doing 00:29:12
what he does is another thing 00:29:15
he tries 00:29:20
to give them the put down as 00:29:23
if to say 00:29:27
you have a great long distance to go yet 00:29:27
your attainment is not at all perfect and uh 00:29:36
where uh they're always talking about 00:29:42
other sects and other schools and saying 00:29:44
well 00:29:44
they haven't really got the point you 00:29:47
see 00:29:48
so that you keep losing faith in 00:29:50
yourself 00:29:53
and uh feeling my goodness i haven't yet 00:29:57
attained this thing 00:29:59
and that keeps you working 00:29:59
but all the time you're being talked out it's like someone who's a pickpocket and 00:30:07
he's 00:30:10
stolen your own watch and is selling it 00:30:12
to you 00:30:12
but just so long as you can be talked out of yourself 00:30:19
you deserve to be 00:30:36
[Laughter] 00:30:45
now you become very aware of this 00:30:49
if you ever do momentarily slip 00:30:52
into some sort of a mystical experience 00:30:56
uh you become aware of this tremendous 00:30:59
gamesmanship going on 00:31:02
in uc it is sort of continuous with the 00:31:04
with all sorts of cosmic games that are 00:31:06
going on 00:31:07
of uh creatures eating other creatures 00:31:10
up 00:31:11
and um the creatures that get eaten 00:31:14
of course transform themselves into the 00:31:15
creatures that eat them and then in turn 00:31:18
uh eat other creatures and uh 00:31:21
you see the whole hide and seek game 00:31:23
going on and then you realize 00:31:25
very clearly that the state of 00:31:27
development that you are in now 00:31:32
is uh no better and no worse than 00:31:34
anybody else's state 00:31:37
because it's like uh 00:31:37
space again which planet is an or which star is in the best position 00:31:44
well it's all equal they're all in the middle 00:31:53
any one can be considered as the center 00:31:56
one 00:31:56
any point on a sphere is the center of the surface of the sphere 00:32:00
so you know in the same way everybody in all his behavior whatever he's doing 00:32:08
whether we 00:32:11
call him from a certain point of view 00:32:13
sick or whether we call him healthy 00:32:15
whether we call him good or bad neurotic 00:32:18
normal psychotic sane 00:32:22
all the manifestations are just like the 00:32:24
leaves on the trees 00:32:28
and uh in each uh 00:32:31
being in a unique way is as christians 00:32:35
would say 00:32:36
manifesting the will of god 00:32:43
so they're really 00:32:46
from that point of view you see there is 00:32:49
nothing to do 00:32:52
to attain buddhahood 00:32:55
nothing at all but you see 00:32:59
that's very difficult to understand 00:33:01
because a lot of people when they 00:33:02
hear that there's nothing to do try to 00:33:04
do nothing 00:33:04
and you can't because you are karma and karma means action 00:33:12
you can't do nothing 00:33:15
but uh the thing you're looking for or think you're looking for 00:33:23
is what you're doing is what's called you 00:33:29
only of course as we all know we've 00:33:35
got ourselves into the idea that oneself 00:33:38
is so difficult to see 00:33:38
because it's like as i've often said try to bite your own teeth or look into your 00:33:44
own eyes 00:33:47
and you can't find it 00:33:47
it's always behind it's like your head is from the optical point of view a 00:33:55
blank space 00:34:00
neither light nor dark it's right in the 00:34:02
middle of everything 00:34:02
and so one of the great tricks of gurus is to set people looking for their heads 00:34:09
there's a famous story of a king in 00:34:15
india in ancient times called yajna 00:34:17
datta 00:34:18
and one morning he woke up and reached 00:34:20
out for his mirror 00:34:21
and brought it over no head 00:34:26
he was looking in the wrong side of the 00:34:27
mirror 00:34:29
and you know he was kind of bleary-eyed 00:34:31
and had a hangover 00:34:33
so he summoned servants and said 00:34:36
ye gods i've lost my head find it 00:34:39
and uh they said but your majesty it's 00:34:41
there on your shoulders he said it is 00:34:42
not 00:34:43
i can't see it in the mirror nobody can 00:34:45
show me my head so they were rushing all 00:34:46
over the place looking for the head 00:34:46
now the trick to that is of course 00:34:51
that uh you are perfectly well aware of your head 00:34:56
only not in a form in which you expect 00:34:59
to be aware of it 00:34:59
you expect to be aware of your own head in the same way as you're aware of other 00:35:06
people's heads 00:35:09
but that wouldn't be true of you because 00:35:11
you've got an inside view on your head 00:35:11
you have an outside view on about the people's heads because of course 00:35:17
you're taking an inside point of view 00:35:22
but the way in which you are aware of 00:35:23
your head 00:35:23
is in terms of what you are seeing and hearing 00:35:29
because all sights and all sounds 00:35:33
are what the nerves inside your head are 00:35:36
doing 00:35:38
that's how to be aware of one's head you 00:35:40
are aware therefore 00:35:41
of yourself the mysterious self that you 00:35:44
have 00:35:45
in terms of experience 00:35:49
because there isn't really any 00:35:50
difference 00:35:50
but that always escapes people you see so perpetually so long as you don't 00:35:58
understand that 00:36:02
you can be talked into going on to all 00:36:05
kinds of weird excursions 00:36:05
and just so long as you believe it you're a sucker 00:36:11
you're hooked 00:36:12
and it takes a tremendous inner confidence and nerve 00:36:18
finally to say 00:36:22
don't pull that stunt on me anymore i i see through your game 00:36:28
and uh because gurus are very clever at putting you down but they're just 00:36:40
trying to see how strong you are 00:36:45
testing you out see if they can hoodwink 00:36:49
you 00:36:50
so long as they can you see they're 00:36:51
going to go on doing it because they're 00:36:52
going to get you to the point where they 00:36:53
can't do it to you anymore 00:36:56
then they're graduate 00:36:56
and so 00:37:00
one of rinzai's students after he saw through it said well there 00:37:08
wasn't much in rinzai's buddhism after 00:37:12
all 00:37:12
course there wasn't he said boldly and straight out 00:37:17
my teaching is just like using an empty 00:37:21
fist to deceive a child 00:37:24
you know when you play games with a 00:37:25
child and pretend you've got something 00:37:27
here 00:37:28
the child goes into all kinds of um 00:37:30
tizzy to get you to open your hand and 00:37:32
show what it is and then there's nothing 00:37:35
fool see you so you can be fooled 00:37:35
as long as you can be fooled when you can't be fooled 00:37:44
you don't ask the question anymore 00:37:50
it's all become clear it's all become 00:37:52
clear that there is no puzzle about this 00:37:54
universe 00:37:54
what makes you think there are puzzles about this universe very simple reason 00:37:59
you're trying to explain it 00:38:02
and when you explain things what you would what do you mean by explanation 00:38:08
there are several meanings of explanation there's really one basic 00:38:15
meaning 00:38:17
but first of all to be able to translate 00:38:20
what is happening 00:38:21
into terms of words or numbers 00:38:25
in other words to describe 00:38:25
but a real explanation is not just a description 00:38:30
it's a description which enables us to 00:38:35
control 00:38:37
what we're describing but didn't we see 00:38:41
in the last session that to control the 00:38:44
world is not really what we want to do 00:38:44
so that if all explanations have us their function 00:38:53
enabling us to control things 00:38:58
then maybe an explanation isn't what we 00:39:00
wanted 00:39:00
and furthermore you can very simply see that what makes things complicated is 00:39:08
explaining them 00:39:12
when somebody explains to you how a 00:39:14
flower works and he's a great botanist 00:39:16
and analyzes all the images of a flower 00:39:18
and shows the channels the 00:39:20
fibers the processes of reproduction and 00:39:23
uh so on that go on in it 00:39:25
everybody stands fascinated said 00:39:28
how complicated that is how clever god 00:39:30
must have been to create that flower 00:39:33
to have all that complexity going it 00:39:35
isn't complicated at all 00:39:37
it's only complicated when you start 00:39:39
thinking about it 00:39:41
because the vehicle 00:39:44
of words is a very clumsy one 00:39:48
and when you try to talk about the 00:39:49
processes of nature what is complicated 00:39:52
is not the processes of nature but 00:39:53
trying to put them into words 00:39:56
that's as complicated as trying to drink 00:39:58
up the ocean with a fork 00:40:01
takes forever and so this intense 00:40:04
complexity that we see in everything 00:40:08
is created by our attempt to analyze it 00:40:12
all 00:40:12
and so what we do is you see when we analyze we use our eyes and ears 00:40:16
as scalpels and we dissect everything 00:40:25
and we have to put a label on every 00:40:26
piece we chop off 00:40:26
and so we scalpelize and we get it right down to atoms 00:40:33
getting finer and finer we suddenly 00:40:37
thought well we've got to the end of it 00:40:38
because the word atom means what is not 00:40:39
cuttable 00:40:40
atomos but then he found we could cut 00:40:45
the atom 00:40:45
and lo and behold big fleas had little 00:40:48
fleas upon their backs to bite him 00:40:50
and it goes on forever there is no 00:40:54
end to the minuteness which you can 00:40:56
unveil through physical investigation 00:40:59
for the simple reason that the 00:41:01
investigation itself is what is chopping 00:41:03
things into pieces 00:41:06
and the sharper you can sharpen your 00:41:07
knife the finer you can cut it 00:41:08
and the knife of the intellect is very sharp indeed 00:41:14
and the sophisticated instruments that 00:41:17
we can now make well there's probably no 00:41:20
limit to it 00:41:20
but in a way 00:41:25
all that is vain knowledge 00:41:28
in a way because you see it what it does is it gives you the 00:41:36
illusion but you've solved your problems 00:41:41
when you have control certain things and 00:41:43
you have solved certain problems 00:41:45
practical problems you say fine 00:41:48
more of that please let's go on solving 00:41:52
problems 00:41:52
and then you do you create a world of people 00:41:57
as we are today far more comfortable 00:42:01
than people who lived in the 19th 00:42:03
century 00:42:03
just remember the troubles of going to a dentist when you were children 00:42:08
or some of you when you were children of 00:42:15
medicine of uh badly heated homes 00:42:19
of uh all sorts of things that we don't 00:42:22
put up with anymore 00:42:24
but the problem is we keep running into 00:42:26
this thing that 00:42:28
all constant stimulations of 00:42:30
consciousness become unconscious 00:42:30
and when we take it as a matter of course to have certain comforts 00:42:36
then we switch the level on which we 00:42:42
worry 00:42:44
when you solve a whole set of problems 00:42:47
people find new ones to worry about 00:42:51
and after a while you begin to get that 00:42:53
haven't we been here before feeling 00:42:57
aren't we just going around on a cycle 00:42:59
and doing the same old thing 00:43:01
over and over and over again because we 00:43:03
don't realize 00:43:05
that we're chasing our own tails 00:43:12
by an eternally recurrent process 00:43:18
of not knowing who you are that is the 00:43:21
hide and seek that is 00:43:23
the nature of what the hindus call the 00:43:27
manvantara and the pralia 00:43:30
the period of the manvantara in which 00:43:32
the worlds are manifested 00:43:33
and the period of the prelia in which 00:43:35
the worlds are withdrawn from 00:43:37
manifestation 00:43:39
in and out in and out 00:43:39
evermore came out by the same door as in i went 00:43:44
the thing is to get to the point where you can see that you are doing that in 00:43:49
every 00:43:53
moment of your existence 00:43:56
with every tiny little atom of your body 00:43:56
you now at this minute you see 00:44:02
are the whole 00:44:06
the whole system 00:44:10
of eating and outing in other words you often think perhaps 00:44:16
um maybe a long long time ahead i shall 00:44:21
reach the point 00:44:22
where i wake up from manifestation 00:44:25
and overcome the world illusion and 00:44:27
discover that i 00:44:28
am the supreme reality 00:44:32
behind all this diversification my 00:44:34
friends there is no diversification 00:44:34
in other words what you call diversification is your game 00:44:42
in the same way as you chop the thing 00:44:46
and then you say it is made of pieces 00:44:50
because you forget that you cut it 00:44:53
so when you see the world is complicated 00:44:54
and that there are life problems 00:44:56
and that uh you might one day succeed 00:45:00
see hundreds and hundreds of people are 00:45:02
running like mad after something that 00:45:03
they call 00:45:04
that is success and they have no idea 00:45:05
what it is 00:45:06
so in exactly the same way the guru is keeping you running and running after 00:45:12
spiritual attainment you don't know what 00:45:15
you want 00:45:16
see where krishnamur is so clever 00:45:19
because he says if you ask me for 00:45:23
enlightenment 00:45:23
how can you ask me for enlightenment if 00:45:25
you don't know what it is how do you 00:45:26
know you want it 00:45:26
is it any concept you have of it will be simply 00:45:33
a way of trying to perpetuate the situation you're already in 00:45:38
if you think you know what you're going out for all you're doing 00:45:43
is you're seeking the past what you 00:45:47
already know what you've already 00:45:49
experienced 00:45:50
therefore that's not it is it because 00:45:53
you say you're looking for something 00:45:55
quite new 00:45:55
but what do you mean new what's your conception of something new 00:46:01
well you figure i can only think about 00:46:05
it in terms of something old 00:46:07
something i once had 00:46:07
so he doesn't say anything 00:46:11
he doesn't indicate anything positively everybody says why are you so negative 00:46:18
why don't you give us something to hang 00:46:21
on to 00:46:23
well if the simple answer is it would be 00:46:25
spurious 00:46:26
you don't need anything to hang on to 00:46:28
you're it you don't need a religion 00:46:28
but then you say well uh 00:46:34
well what is all this religious stuff about them why don't we just 00:46:40
forget it you can try 00:46:43
by all means just go away don't go to gurus don't go to church 00:46:52
don't 00:46:56
enter philosophical discussions forget 00:46:57
but then you'll realize that by having consented to forget it 00:47:04
you're still seeking 00:47:11
what a trap what can you do you see if 00:47:14
you stay here 00:47:15
and listen to me or to anyone else who 00:47:18
comes around here 00:47:20
you're fooling yourself but if you go 00:47:23
away you're fooling yourself too 00:47:23
because you still think that's going to improve your situation 00:47:31
it won't and therefore when you discover that it doesn't 00:47:39
you think well maybe it was a mistake to 00:47:41
go away and you come back to the guru 00:47:44
and he looks at you and says uh uh uh-uh 00:47:47
you 00:47:48
are very undisciplined very very uh 00:47:52
inferior student 00:47:52
and uh you you need to apply yourself 00:47:55
well as i explained i explained what he's doing 00:48:03
but it comes down in a way to a sort of 00:48:09
contest with a guru 00:48:11
you see will you call his bluff 00:48:14
you're afraid to because you might 00:48:17
discover that if you do call his bluff 00:48:19
he's no better than you 00:48:20
are well that's what you're supposed to 00:48:22
find out 00:48:25
but without being cynical about it 00:48:28
he's as divine as you are 00:48:28
but you've got to call the bluff there's going to be a showdown 00:48:33
and it's it's a double bind the whole situation's a double bind 00:48:39
because it doesn't do any good to stay 00:48:44
here and it doesn't do you any good to 00:48:45
go away 00:48:49
either to do something about it or to do 00:48:50
nothing about it 00:48:50
now then there's something else when you understand that 00:48:57
and when you realize that um there's 00:49:02
nothing to realize 00:49:04
but it's all here then what are you 00:49:07
going to do 00:49:07
well of course this is the sense of zen poem 00:49:14
supernatural activity and marvelous 00:49:18
power 00:49:18
drawing water carrying fuel you know do whatever one does as a human being 00:49:24
but there's a little element of 00:49:29
philistinism in that 00:49:31
it's like when a child is pestering 00:49:34
father or mother with all sorts of 00:49:35
questions 00:49:37
they finally get down to the deepest 00:49:38
metaphysical problems they say oh shut 00:49:40
up and eat your donut 00:49:45
and um i wouldn't say that you see 00:49:49
at this point because 00:49:52
uh life as one looks at it you see 00:49:55
is in fact a celebration 00:49:58
of itself when you look out at night at 00:50:02
the stars and you really wonder good god 00:50:05
what is all that about 00:50:07
well it's a firework display 00:50:10
and it's celebrating high holy day 00:50:10
it's whoopi and the whole world is whoopee 00:50:17
it's a kind of exuberance and therefore the proper function of religion 00:50:23
is digging this it's not seeking 00:50:26
it's not seeking anything but is in a way thanksgiving 00:50:35
that's why of course the christians were 00:50:40
right and calling the mass the eucharist 00:50:42
the thanksgiving 00:50:44
only they had such a complicated way of 00:50:46
thinking about it that nobody could 00:50:47
understand it 00:50:47
so they're in in religion all religious exercises whether they are 00:50:55
meditative or whether they are 00:50:58
ritualistic 00:51:00
are whoopi they are not something you do 00:51:04
in order to attain anything 00:51:07
they are like art forms like dancing 00:51:11
they are expressive of attainment 00:51:14
of the attainless attainment 00:51:18
so here's another hang up for you when 00:51:20
you go to mr suzuki 00:51:22
who runs the zen center he's a good 00:51:24
disciple of dogen 00:51:27
who brought then a certain school of zen 00:51:30
to japan 00:51:31
in the uh 13th century 00:51:37
jogen said you can't sit and meditate 00:51:40
unless you're already a buddha 00:51:43
in which case why meditate well 00:51:46
meditation is just the way a buddha sits 00:51:51
and he call this sitting just to sit not 00:51:53
to attain enlightenment 00:51:55
the minute you do that you see you're 00:51:57
not meditating 00:51:57
so you only become a good meditator if you're not looking for anything 00:52:07
and therefore you realize what a great thing it is to be able to sit what a 00:52:14
great thing it is not 00:52:19
to dissect the world with your 00:52:21
analytical intellect 00:52:23
to be able to look out at the water or 00:52:25
the trees or the floor and the light on 00:52:27
it in front of you without calling it 00:52:28
light 00:52:29
or floor or trees or thinking that it 00:52:32
has parts 00:52:33
or thinking that it's complicated 00:52:36
it isn't so when you can 00:52:40
sit without thinking not with an empty 00:52:43
mind mind you i'm going back to that 00:52:45
point 00:52:46
not with an empty mind but just um an un 00:52:49
a non-analytic mind a non-probing mind 00:52:53
uh where you're not creating problems 00:52:55
all the time by trying to control it 00:52:57
by trying to control your mind by trying 00:52:59
to control your experience what you see 00:53:01
and hear 00:53:02
you then just simply discover 00:53:06
that there is no way of controlling what 00:53:07
you're experiencing 00:53:09
because what is you 00:53:09
and to try and really fundamentally control that 00:53:15
this is going around the circle 00:53:17
so if i would say to you now what you have to learn is to let it happen 00:53:23
that's wrong too there's no one to let 00:53:27
it happen 00:53:29
if i say to you accept your experience 00:53:32
um 00:53:33
be calm and open to things that again 00:53:35
perpetuates the illusion that you're 00:53:37
something different from it 00:53:39
so we go round and round 00:53:39
but if there are some people who want to get together 00:53:47
and like we would get together to play 00:53:49
poker or to 00:53:52
have a walk go fishing or sail a boat if 00:53:55
there are some people who want to get 00:53:56
together to meditate 00:53:58
and have rituals and to chant uh great 00:54:02
it's an art form 00:54:02
and you can only use it and make it a good art form 00:54:07
if you're not using it to get something 00:54:12
and this is what really is the bane of 00:54:15
temples all over the world 00:54:15
you go into buddhist temples where they theoretically don't believe 00:54:21
in any god but there are the people 00:54:24
praying 00:54:24
and they are all doing it in order that 00:54:30
we get a male child next time around or that the horse recover from a disease 00:54:36
or that mama gets cured of the dropsy 00:54:43
and all these petitions are going on and 00:54:45
on and on 00:54:46
people always coming to the temple to 00:54:47
ask for something low brow people for 00:54:49
low brow things high brow people for 00:54:51
eyebrow things 00:54:53
and they're all the vendors sit outside 00:54:55
and sell souvenirs and magic and charms 00:54:57
and all the people go in and do this 00:55:00
and all these serious priests sitting 00:55:01
there 00:55:03
really having to keep up face and say 00:55:05
yes 00:55:06
we can provide these services 00:55:06
on the other hand if you go in to one of these temples 00:55:13
along with all the faithful followers 00:55:16
and have a ball 00:55:18
buy a buy a bee buy a candle buy this 00:55:21
fire 00:55:21
buy some incense go in and dig this 00:55:24
great 00:55:25
thing going on salute the buddhas or the 00:55:27
crystal the 00:55:28
altars or the crucifixes or what you 00:55:30
will but don't take it seriously 00:55:35
and this is one of the great important 00:55:37
transformations 00:55:39
of today in our 00:55:43
consciousness is that a great many 00:55:46
people are finding out 00:55:48
that religion is not supposed to be 00:55:49
taken seriously 00:55:49
this is a shocking thing to many people uh there used to be an old saying that a 00:55:57
religion is dead when the priests laugh 00:56:02
across the altars 00:56:04
that's true in one sense when the 00:56:07
priests know that they've got a racket 00:56:08
going 00:56:09
and they don't believe one word of it 00:56:11
and they're laughing across the altar 00:56:12
because of all these suckers around 00:56:14
uh doing it then it's true uh the 00:56:17
religion is dead 00:56:20
but when the priests laugh at the orders 00:56:23
because they're having such fun because 00:56:26
this whole scene is so beautiful 00:56:28
uh well it's the difference between 00:56:32
some stuffy old buddhist priest 00:56:35
humming a sutra and alan ginsberg 00:56:37
chanting a sutra 00:56:39
uh that's a thing to hear tell these 00:56:42
people 00:56:42
but they get paid for it this is magical but when alan ginsberg chant the future 00:56:53
everybody gets in the circle and he gets 00:56:57
these little bells and they get going 00:56:58
it's just like 00:56:59
it's like a a jam session where 00:57:02
everybody is absolutely delighted 00:57:04
well that's the way to do it and if you 00:57:07
can't do it that way forget it 00:57:07