Subtitles
the question 00:00:02
the question that we have to decide whether to take 00:00:03
life seriously or not 00:00:08
[Music] 00:00:11
that is to say whether the plot is comic 00:00:13
or tragic 00:00:17
and if it's tragic you see is it must we 00:00:20
say that it's ultimately tragic 00:00:23
[Music] 00:00:25
and the question of who are you 00:00:29
and uh are we to say that i myself 00:00:33
write down root i'm just a little 00:00:36
kind of jerk of some kind 00:00:39
that really has nothing to do with this 00:00:41
cosmos but just arises in it 00:00:44
and is here on sufferance for a short 00:00:46
period and then 00:00:47
absolutely nothing follows you see 00:00:50
or the alternative to that is what i 00:00:53
really am 00:00:55
the same as the whole thing that is the 00:00:58
works the it 00:00:59
or whatever you want to call it rahman 00:01:02
god the dao 00:01:03
the great void the buddha nature i don't 00:01:05
care the self 00:01:06
anything any name you want and uh 00:01:06
whereas that attitude you can look at it for various points of view in judging it 00:01:18
you can say 00:01:21
it's wishful thinking you can say that 00:01:25
it's uh 00:01:26
insufferable pride but 00:01:30
the point of the matter is as i tried to 00:01:32
show 00:01:33
any other way of looking at things is 00:01:36
kind of schizoid 00:01:39
it looks at human beings as if they 00:01:43
arrived in this world like a bunch of 00:01:45
birds on the branches of a barren tree 00:01:49
they just got settled there you know 00:01:50
they don't belong 00:01:52
the sense of being strangers and 00:01:54
pilgrims from another domain altogether 00:01:58
well where is this other domain and how 00:02:01
does it relate to this one 00:02:02
are they separate i showed you that even 00:02:05
when we say that two 00:02:06
domains are the poles apart the very 00:02:09
fact that they're poles 00:02:10
shows that they have a hidden connection 00:02:14
and the hidden connection is the big 00:02:16
thing in life all you junkies know that 00:02:16
and uh so in other words we get a pattern of organization 00:02:30
that is radial rather than an assemblage 00:02:35
as if the universe were really a 00:02:37
multiverse 00:02:38
a lot of things that got collected 00:02:40
together out of the infinite wastes of 00:02:42
space 00:02:43
and sort of began to monitor around each 00:02:45
other 00:02:46
whereas the other pattern which is so 00:02:48
much more sensible is central 00:02:50
uh and radial and i showed you how the 00:02:52
crystals and the stars and the octopuses 00:02:55
and even the human beings 00:02:57
are all radial structures 00:03:00
of course we don't see our radial 00:03:02
relationship 00:03:03
to the totality of the universe because 00:03:06
it isn't obvious 00:03:09
it's obvious that a tree is an arm of 00:03:12
the earth reaching up and waving at the 00:03:14
sky 00:03:15
and a mountain is another kind of uh 00:03:18
radiation from the earth 00:03:20
and so is a leg from a body and hair and 00:03:23
things like that 00:03:25
but what makes human beings as the 00:03:27
highest of the mammals 00:03:30
so uh conscious of being independent 00:03:35
is that they are topologically an 00:03:36
enclosed surface 00:03:38
you see which wanders around 00:03:41
independently of the ground 00:03:43
what we don't notice is that we are not 00:03:46
independent of the ground at all 00:03:48
that wandering around is something that 00:03:51
is entirely related to there being some 00:03:53
ground 00:03:53
in other words when you run up a hill 00:03:56
the hill also runs you up it 00:03:59
the hill rises and lifts you as you run 00:04:02
you see and uh if you 00:04:06
understand that you don't take a hostile 00:04:08
attitude to mountains and hills 00:04:10
you're grateful to them for lifting you 00:04:12
up so high in the air because that's 00:04:14
presumably why you went up that the 00:04:15
thing was high 00:04:16
it was lifted up you wanted to be lifted 00:04:18
up it lifted you up you had to cooperate 00:04:20
of course 00:04:20
i always liked the illustration that i've used before 00:04:24
perhaps you haven't heard it of the 00:04:29
thistle down 00:04:31
thistle down too comes moving through 00:04:34
the sky 00:04:35
i once was playing with with the thing 00:04:38
you know just came out of the blue sky 00:04:39
and i 00:04:40
caught it like that pulled it under my 00:04:42
nose and i 00:04:43
it started to pull to get away see looks 00:04:46
as if it were 00:04:47
a butterfly or something it pulls away 00:04:49
when you catch it by the leg 00:04:50
and i thought oh no of course that's not 00:04:52
the thistle down it's the wind 00:04:56
well which was it 00:05:00
you know in a famous debate it was 00:05:03
settled by the sixth patriarch of zen 00:05:06
there were two uh monks arguing when a 00:05:08
flag was flapping in the wind whether it 00:05:10
was the wind or the flag that was moving 00:05:13
and he said it's neither it's the mind 00:05:15
[Music] 00:05:17
and so in a way the same thing was true 00:05:19
about the thistledown 00:05:21
the mind is the moving thing because 00:05:23
which point of view 00:05:24
will you take which attitude of mind 00:05:27
will you take towards this 00:05:29
is it the wind moving the thistle down 00:05:32
or is it the thistle down that is moving 00:05:35
itself with the wind 00:05:38
after all when you see a sailing boat 00:05:41
and there's a man in the sailing boat 00:05:43
who is moving the boat is it the wind 00:05:45
moving the boat 00:05:46
or is the man moving the boat because he 00:05:47
was smart enough to put up a sail 00:05:50
much smarter way of getting around than 00:05:52
rowing you don't have to work 00:05:55
it's intelligence you see the mind that 00:05:57
moves the boat 00:05:57
and uh so in the same way i thought you know this thistle down has some kind of 00:06:02
intelligence it's radial it's organized 00:06:05
it's beautiful 00:06:07
and it's used that to sail itself 00:06:10
with the wind to enable itself to pull 00:06:13
like a little organism playing with the 00:06:15
wind 00:06:16
and so in just the same way each one of 00:06:19
us 00:06:20
uses the universe to get around 00:06:25
and the universe uses us to play with 00:06:28
and to make games and patterns and to do 00:06:30
its stuff 00:06:33
so uh because we seem to be disconnected 00:06:36
and entirely sealed within our skin 00:06:38
that is a very deceptive thing because 00:06:41
the skin is not really the boundary of 00:06:43
man 00:06:45
you'll notice that in various periods of 00:06:47
art 00:06:49
human beings have been shaped in 00:06:51
different ways 00:06:51
and have been more or less transparent at some times at other times 00:06:58
opaque and 00:07:05
sometimes the emphasis has been 00:07:09
on the state of mind which this human 00:07:12
being is in 00:07:13
at other times the emphasis is on the 00:07:15
bodily confirmations and so on 00:07:19
in uh the work of painters today 00:07:22
one sees images that at first sight one 00:07:24
doesn't recognize as being human 00:07:24
there was an exhibition at the museum of modern art in new york some years ago 00:07:30
called the new image of man 00:07:33
[Music] 00:07:35
and uh these things didn't look like 00:07:37
human beings at all 00:07:39
some of them did but but that's because 00:07:42
what does a human being look like 00:07:44
that depends on your point of view 00:07:44
[Music] you see if you are prejudiced 00:07:50
that a human being is only what is 00:07:56
inside his skin 00:07:59
then you think that when anybody 00:08:02
paints the human being beyond those 00:08:04
boundaries 00:08:05
that he's lost the image of man he 00:08:07
hasn't necessarily lost it at all 00:08:13
you see 00:08:14
[Music] 00:08:17
there's an old feeling that the shape of 00:08:19
the universe is the shape of man 00:08:22
i don't know if you've ever heard that 00:08:24
said 00:08:27
that man is the microcosm and that the 00:08:30
universe as a whole is the macrocosm 00:08:30