I wonder if it's ever struck  you how curious the thing it is

that most of the things that we experience  we regard as things that happen to us

which we ourselves do not  originate which are events

expressing some sort of power or  activity that is external to ourselves

and if you consider that you realize that what you  mean by yourself is rather narrowly circumscribed

even events that go on in our own bodies  

are put in the category of things that happen to  us in the same way as things that go on in the  

world outside our skins if there's  a thunderstorm or an earthquake  

well it happens to you're not responsible for  it but so in the same way when you have hiccups  

you didn't plan on it if you have belly  rumbles you had no intention of doing it and  

as to the catastrophic act of getting born well  you had nothing to do with that and you can spend  

all your life blaming your parents for putting  you in the situation in which you find yourself

and this uh way of looking at the  world in this sort of passive mood  

as something that happens to you goes right  down to our general feeling about life  

it goes down to the way in which as westerners we  have been accustomed to look at human existence

as a precarious event in the cosmos

that uh on the whole is depicted as being  completely unsympathetic and alien to our  

existence in other words if you're reared  with a 20th century or shall we say an early  

20th century common sense which is based on the  philosophy of science of the 19th century with its  

rejection of christianity and judaism you regard  yourself as an accident a biological accident  

in a stupid universe which is mechanical  but has no feelings no finer feelings

a vast pointless gyration of radioactive  rocks and gas in which you happen to occur  

of course if you don't have that point  of view and you are more traditional  

you look upon yourself as a child of god

and therefore under authority in other  words there's a big boss on top of all this  

who allowed you at his pleasure to deign  to have the disgusting frontal to exist  

and uh you better watch your p's and q's  because that almighty is looking after you  

with the attitude of this is going to  hurt me more than it's going to hurt you  

and uh when you look at the world in that image  or in the other image that it's a stupid mechanism  

either point of view you  take you don't really belong

you are not really part of all  this and i could use a stronger  

word than part only we don't have it in english

we have to say something like um  connected with it essential to it  

or to put it in the strongest possible way it  is quite alien to western thought to conceive  

that the external world which is  defined as something that happens to you  

and your body itself is something that you got  caught up with it is quite alien to our thought  

to consider all that as you yourself because you  see we have such a myopic view of what oneself is

it's as if in other words

we selected how much experience  is really to be regarded as me

as if you focused your attention on certain  restricted areas of the whole panorama  

of things that you experience and say  i will take sides with that much of it

now we come here right at the start  to an extremely important principle

which is

the different points of view you get when  you change your level of magnification  

that is to say you can look at something  with a microscope and see it a certain way  

you can look at it with a naked eye and see  it in a certain way you look at it with a  

telescope and you see it in another way now  which level of magnification is the correct one  

well obviously they're all correct but they're  just different points of view you can for example  

look at a newspaper photograph under a magnifying  glass and where with the naked eye you will see a  

human face with a magnifying glass you'll just see  a profusion of dots rather meaninglessly scattered

but as you stand away from that connection  of dots which all seem to be separate and  

apart from each other they suddenly  arrange themselves into a pattern  

and you see that these individual dots add up  to some kind of sense now you'll see it once  

from this illustration that maybe you when you  take a myopic view of yourself as most of us do  

but you may add up to some kind of sense that is  not apparent to you in your ordinary consciousness  

when we examine our blood streams under a  microscope we see there's one hell of a fight  

going on all sorts of microorganisms are chewing  each other up and if we got it overly fascinated  

with our view of our own blood streams in  the microscope we should start taking sides  

which would be fatal because the health of our  organism depends on the continuance of this battle  

what is in other words conflict at one level  of magnification is harmony at a higher level  

and could it possibly be therefore that we  with all our problems conflicts neuroses  

sicknesses political outrages wars tortures  and everything that goes on in human life  

are a state of conflict which can be seen in  a larger perspective as a situation of harmony

but well it is claimed you see that some human  beings have broken through to that vision  

that they slipped somehow or other into states  of consciousness where they see the apparent  

disintegration and  disorganization of everyday life  

as the functioning of a totality which  at its level is completely harmonious  

and you could say aha at last i see i got  the point i've seen how all this makes sense  

but what this insight depended  upon was your overcoming

the illusion that space separates things

that is to say the space the interval between  your body and mind the interval created by  

birth at one end and death at the other and then  after somebody's death then somebody else's birth  

these are events with intervals between  them and normally we regard these intervals  

in time in these intervals in space  as having no importance no function  

we tend to see the universe itself as really  consisting in all the stars and galaxies

that's what it is that's  what we notice but the space  

in which all this happens is sort of written  off for something that isn't really there

but what one has to realize is that the space is  an essential function of the things in the space  

after all you can't have separate stars  unless there is a space around them  

eliminate the space and you will see you couldn't  have this phenomenon at all and vice versa you  

couldn't have the space they wouldn't be there in  any sense whatsoever if there weren't the bodies  

in it so the bodies in the space and the space are  two aspects of a single continuum they're related  

together in exactly the same way as a back and  a front and you just don't get one without the  

other so the moment you see that intervals that  space is connected you can understand at once

how

you

are not just

to be exclusively defined as a flash of  consciousness that occurs between two  

eternal darknesses which is the popular common  sense view which western man has of his own life

that you consider that in the  darkness that comes before your birth  

there was no you and in the eternal darkness  that follows your death there is likewise no you  

and i'm going to discuss these matters not  by appealing to any special spooky knowledge  

as if i had been traveling on the higher planes  and knew all my previous incarnations and  

therefore could tell you authoritatively that  uh you are much more than this individuality  

i'm going to do it on the basis of complete common  sense that everybody has access to the facts  

and that just what you have to realize is that  life is a pattern of immense complexity and what  

you call yourself as a living organism say i am my  whole body at the very least now what is that body  

that body is recognizable and i recognize  my friends when i meet them again with luck  

and you recognize me although  the last time any of you saw me  

i was absolutely something entirely  different from what i am now  

just as the flame of a candle is never a constant  a flame of a candle is a stream of hot gas  

only you say the flame of the candle as if  it were a constant well it is a recognizably  

constant pattern the spear-shaped outline of  the flame and its coloration is a constant  

pattern but in exactly the same way we are all  constant patterns and that's all we are the only  

thing constant about us at all is the doing  rather than the being it's the way we behave  

the way we dance only there's no we that  dances it's just the dancing just as the flame  

is the streaming of hot gas just as a whirlpool  in a river is a whirling of streaming water

there is no thing that whirlpools there is the  whirlpool and in the same way each one of us  

is a very very delightfully complex  undulation of the energy of the whole universe  

only by our process of miseducation we've been  deprived of the knowledge of that fact not as  

if though there was someone to blame for this  because it's always with our own tacit consent  

because life is basically a game of  hide and seek because life is pulsation  

on and off here it is and now it isn't and  by being this pulsation we know it's there  

see you you don't know what you mean by  on unless you know what you mean by off

that's why when we want to awaken  someone we knock at the door  

it's not enough to slam the door once with your  fist makers big noise but you keep up a pulsation  

because that by its on and  off-ness attracts attention  

uh all life you see is this flickering in  and out only there are enormous rhythms in it  

there are very fast flickering ins and outs  like the reaction of light upon our eyes  

such that if i take a lighted cigarette in the  dark and i spin it you will see a circle of fire  

because the reflection of that cigarette tip on  your retina lasts it endures just in the same way  

as on a radar screen an image stays a little  while until it's revivified by another round

so in that way you see you notice continuity and  in the same way then you notice the continuity of  

a light because although i say with an arc lamp  an arc lamp is actually a flickering light and  

that's why they don't allow arc lights to be  used in any shop where there's a circular saw  

moving because sometimes the flickering  speed of the arc light so synchronizes  

with the turning speed of the teeth on the blade  that the teeth look as if they're not moving

and so anybody who might put his hand on the  blade would have it chopped off thinking it  

was a still one so in this way very fast impulses  are looked upon as constant and we see where there  

are fast impulses a solid thing when you look  at the blade of a propeller or an electric fan  

the separated four or three blades become a  solid disc and you cannot throw an egg through it

well so in exactly the same way you  can't put your finger through a rock  

because the rock is moving too  fast for your finger to go through  

that's the meaning of the of the whole phenomenon  of hardness hardness in nature is immense energy  

but acting in a very concentrated space  restricted space but going to beat health  

that's why you can't get through it now  from those very tiny fast rhythms which  

give us the impression of continuity there are  also in this universe immensely slow rhythms  

and these are very difficult for us to keep track  of and they impress us and depress us as our own  

life and death as our coming and going which goes  for what is to us such a slow pace that we can't  

possibly believe that it is really a rhythm we  think of it as our birth as something quite unique  

that could never occur again because we're so  close to it you see and it's moving so slowly

and so with that point of view we are like uh  marshall mcluhan said he borrowed a metaphor  

from me which is that we are driving a  car looking at the rear vision mirror

that means that the environment in which you  believe yourself to exist is always a past one  

it isn't the one you're actually  in the process of growth  

the the basic process of biology is one in which

lower orders are always being superseded by  higher orders but the lower order can never  

figure out or only very rarely figure out  what the higher order is that's taking over

and may see it as a terrible threat  as total disaster as the very end  

therefore can never be aware  that the principle of growth

always has and always will continue  because that's what's going on but  

you never know what the next step is  going to be because if you did know  

you wouldn't take it because it would already be  passed do you understand this that any certainly  

known future is an event of which we can  say you've had it and in that sense it's  

past when we play a games and we say in chess  or in a bridge or whatever game you're playing  

the outcome of the game becomes certain we at  that point cancel the game and begin a new one  

because the whole zest of the thing which  takes me back to the idea that this whole  

thing is a hide and seek game is that you  don't know what the next order coming up is

but one thing you can be sure of it will be  an order and it will comprehend you at the  

moment we stand at a time in history where we're  beginning to think of a great countdown on the  

end of the human race terrifying possibility  that through atomic energy we may obliterate  

this planet and uh turn the whole globe into a  star maybe that's the way all the stars started

imagine you know this great thing  coming up the countdown on the end  

seven six five four three two one

where have you heard that  before you sit on the sea shop

and you hear the waves going in and out

and you don't stop to think  that's what you're doing  

that's what the whole business is doing and there  are places where the wave mounts and mounts and it  

gets too big for its boots or whatever and  it spills and breaks we could do just that

but uh

very important to realize that that's what you're  doing because then you don't get panicky about it  

and the person who's going to press that  button as a person is going to be in panic

so if you realize that that's what it  is and that uh it doesn't really matter  

if the whole human race blows itself up  then there's a chance that it won't do it

that's the only chance we have

not to do this thing which attracts us like a  kind of vertigo like a person who looks over  

a precipice and is all set to throw himself over  or a person who jumps out of a plane when they're  

skydiving and forgets to pull the parachute  ring because he gets fascinated with the target  

it's called target fascination he  just goes straight at it you see  

so we can get absolutely fascinated with  disaster with doom or you know all the  

news in the newspapers is invariably bad news  there is no good news in the newspapers people  

wouldn't buy a newspaper consisting of good news  even the free press is full of terrible news

except the san francisco article and uh

the fascination you see for this doom

might be neutralized if we would say well

why bother about that

it's just another fluctuation in this huge  marvelous endless chain of our own selves  

and our own energy going on see here's the  problem because of our myopia because of our  

the way we've as it were restricted consciousness  to focus upon just that certain little area  

of experience that we call voluntary action  that's us and everything else happens to us

now that's obviously absurd let's suppose you take  in your hand one of those toys a gyroscopic top

and you suddenly notice the minute you get this  in your hand that it has a kind of vitality to it  

it seems to resist you it starts pushing you in  a certain way see and sometimes you're with it  

and following it then sometimes you see it it's  just as if you held a living animal in your hand  

you know you pick up a uh hamster  

you know or a guinea pig and you hold this little  thing in your hand it's always trying to escape

so the gyroscope always seems to be trying to  escape your whole now in exactly the same way  

what you're experiencing all the time all sorts  of things are getting out of control and doing  

things you don't expect it's trying to escape  your whole all right then don't grab it so hard

and you discover that this  living thing that you're feeling  

like the gyroscope top it's your own life

because you can see very simply that you would  not understand the experience that you call  

voluntary action and decision being in control  and being yourself unless in opposition to that  

there was something else you couldn't realize self  

and control and will unless there was something  other out of control and instead of will won't

it's the two together only that produces the  sensation that you call having a personal identity  

only there is a funny thing about human  consciousness which has been worked out  

very carefully in gestalt psychology which is  that our attention is captured by the figure  

rather than the background by the relatively  enclosed area rather than the diffuse area and by  

something moving rather than what is relatively  still and to all those phenomena that in this  

way attract our attention we attribute a higher  degree of reality than the ones we don't notice

that's only because for the moment those are more  important to us consciousness you see is a radar  

that is scanning the environment  to look out for trouble  

just in the same way as a ship's radar is looking  for rocks or other ships and the radar therefore  

does not notice the vast areas of space  where there are no rocks no other ships

so in the same way our eyes or rather the  selective consciousness behind the eyes  

only pays attention to what we think is important  

i am at this moment aware of all of you in  this room of every single detail of your  

clothing of your faces and so on but i'm not  noticing it all and therefore i will not be  

able to remember tomorrow exactly how each  one of you looked and what you were wearing

because what i notice is restricted to things that  i think are particularly important if i notice  

some particularly beautiful girl in the audience  then i might notice also what she's wearing  

and uh that would be memorable but by and  large you see we scan things over but we pay  

attention only to what our set of values tells  us we ought to pay attention to and so in this  

way we have this rather myopic way of looking at  things and we screen out from attention anything

that is not immediately important to a  scanning system based on sensing danger

but quite obviously you as a complete individual  are much more than the scanning system

you are in relationships with the external world  that on the whole are incredibly harmonious

going back to this illustration of every living  body is something like the flame of a candle  

the energies of life in the form of  temperature light air and food and so on  

are streaming through you all at this moment  in the most magnificently harmonious way

and your all of you far more  beautiful than any candle flame  

just sitting in these chairs just going you know

only we are so used to it  we say about that so what  

show me something interesting  show me something new  

because it's a characteristic of consciousness  that it ignores stimuli that are constant when  

anything is constant it says okay that's safe it's  in the bag didn't pay attention to that anymore

and therefore we eliminate systematically from  our awareness all the gorgeous things that are  

going on all the time and instead only become  focused on the things the troublesome things  

that might happen to upset it which is  all right but we make too much of it  

and become we make so much of it that we  identify our very selves i ego with the radar  

with the troubleshooter and that's only  a tiny fragment of one's total being  

so that if you do become aware that you are  not simply that scanning mechanism but you  

are your complete organism then very swiftly in  turn as a consequence of that you become aware  

that your organism is not the way you think  about it when you look at it from the standpoint  

of conscious attention from the standpoint  of the ego from the standpoint of the ego  

your organism is uh your kind of vehicle  your automobile in which you go around

but from a physical point of view your organism  is again like the candle flame or the whirlpool  

it is something which is a continuous  patterning or activity of the whole cosmos

the key idea here is pattern

let's suppose uh i'm going to borrow a metaphor  from buckminster fuller suppose we have a rope

and the one section of this rope is made of manila  hemp the next section is cotton the next section  

is silk the next section is nylon and so on now  we tie a knot in this rope just an ordinary one  

over knot you find by putting your finger in the  knot you can move it all the way down the rope  

now as this knot travels it's first of all  made of manila hemp it's then made of cotton  

it's then made of silk it's then made of nylon  and so on but the knot keeps going on that's  

the integrity of pattern the continuing pattern  which is what you are because you might you know  

be for several years you might be a vegetarian  and you might be a meat eater and so on and you  

know your constitution changes all the time but  people's your friends still recognize you because  

you're still putting on the same show it's the  same pattern that is the recognizable individual  

but we are trained in our language the  very structure of the language we talk  

deceives us into misunderstanding  this because when we see a pattern

we ask what's it made of like you see a table  is it made of wood or is it made of aluminum  

but then when you inquire into what is wood and  how does wood differ from aluminum the only thing  

a scientist can tell you is the different patterns  that is to say the different molecular structure  

of the two things and a molecular structure is  not a description of what something is made of  

it is a description of what dance it is performing  what motions what kind of a symphony this is  

because basically all  phenomena of life are musical  

and uh gold differs from lead in exactly the  same way that a waltz differs from a musica

it's a different dance and there  isn't anything that's dancing  

that is a deception we get into because  we have two spots of speech in our grammar  

we have nouns and verbs and verbs are  supposed to describe the activities of nouns

and this is simply a convention of speech you  could have a language with only verbs in it  

you don't need any nouns or you could also have  a language with the nouns only and no verbs  

and uh it would perfectly adequately  describe what's going on in the world  

so if you were used to speaking the part  with a language that had one part of speech  

you could say just as much as we can with two  and be a lot clearer only at first it would  

sound awkward but you'd soon get used to it and  then when you got used to it it would be a matter  

of common sense that the patterning of the world  is not some kind of stuff that's patterning you  

don't have to seek for a substance underlying the  whole thing is just patterning and we're all that

and so in this way there is to a person who

really wakes up you very soon realize that your  existence is not something that is just the uh  

hopeless little creature that's  suddenly confronted with a great  

big external world that goes  at him you know and eats him up  

every tiniest little thing that comes into being  every my new little fruit fly or nat or bacterium

i will go so far as to say is an event  upon which this whole cosmos depends

this thing goes both ways it's not only that  every little organism which exists depends on  

its total environment the reverse is also  true that the total environment depends on  

each and every one of those little organisms  so that you could say this universe consists  

of a an arrangement of pattern in which  every event is essential to the whole thing

now we screen that idea out of our  consciousness in exactly the same way  

that we screen out the perception  of space as an important reality  

just as we pay attention to the  figure and ignore the background

so we see one way of looking at things mainly that  the organism is very frail against the environment  

it lasts a long time the environment but the  organism only lasts a short time what do you mean  

the environment lasts a long time what does the  environment consist of just a lot of little things

and yet there is the environment just as the  same way as there is the face in the newspaper  

photograph behind all those little dots when you  get far enough away from it you see the face when  

you get far enough away from all the organisms and  the little bits of things you see the environment  

in another scale of magnification but  actually uh the whole thing is arranged in a  

a polar system where the enormous depends on  the tiny and the tiny depends on the enormous  

and you get a relationship between these  extremes which can be called a transaction  

that is to say a transaction  when is buying and selling  

it's impossible to have buying without selling  and selling without buying so you you always  

wherever you are looking at the general panorama  of sensory experience try switching try shifting  

your attention to all the things you thought were  unimportant to the constants to the background

and begin looking at the spaces between people

all painters have to learn this because  especially if you're working in oils  

you actually have to paint in the background  weavers know this because when they're making  

patterns in weaving they've got to weave the  background as well or if you do needlepoint  

with embroidery think of the hours you spend  putting in the background over the canvas in wool  

and you become aware of it same way the people  who made the great oriental carpets they're much  

more aware of the background as constituting  an essential part of the total experience

so as you become aware of this you see  the same thing that you notice in music  

namely that it is only as a result of hearing the  interval between tones that you hear any melody  

if you don't hear the interval your tone  deaf and all notes of the same noise  

all you hear is rhythm you don't hear any melody  

you've got to hear the interval so then watch the  intervals between people the things that aren't  

said the things that a tacit the things that  are implicit rather than explicit in all life  

and then you begin to get connected you know  it's very important to have a connection in life  

and um be in the know and uh this is the  way it it fundamentally comes out of seeing

the thing you forgot you know  you can always bug people  

the most beautiful way in a very helpful way  by just saying to them what did you forget

well i don't know uh was i supposed to  remember oh i'm not i'm really not trying  

to put you on i mean it's not difficult this  is something completely obvious that you forgot

you'd easily remember it because it's so  obvious well that's the hardest thing in  

the world to think of what's the most  obvious thing i forgot what's that

well who do you think you are

well how do you answer that question  who are you well you give a name  

you say i'm joe doakes i'm  alan watts that's not true

that's what people told you you were

they put that name on you and they taught  you to identify with it and to behave as  

it was expected to behave but that's not who  you are you know very well go back in your  

memory go back into your infancy before they  started telling you all this stuff who are you

and if you get with that you  know very well who you are

the jolly old ancient of days

only there's a conspiracy that  you mustn't let on about that  

because everybody is and uh if one person  realizes it the other's a little bit offended  

and they say well uh how come you're so great

we worked it in christianity by a very clever  thing of allowing just one individual to be  

recognized as the god incarnate and uh  nobody else therefore could be and since  

he had been safely crucified and whisked  up to heaven he wouldn't bother us anymore

so everybody therefore who gets an intimation  of who they really are and ever comes out with  

it in christian civilization people say who  the hell do you think you are you jesus christ  

well you can say jesus christ said he  was jesus christ and everybody put him  

down for it and that's what you're doing to  me oh let's say forget that one because uh  

it's like somebody comes out and  composes some perfectly terrible music  

and the critics say this man is a cacophonist  he is completely incompetent and he said did  

you read the reviews of beethoven's first  symphony when it was performed at vienna

now the thing is

we

allowed one person you see one human  individual to be the incarnate god

because we have all been living in a theory of  the universe in which the individual is simply  

involved in something that happens to him and we  feel that this thing that happens to us is reality  

it is facts that we have to face and accept and  cope with see it's always something other than you  

you don't recognize it as an  integral part of your own being  

without which you cannot know  what you mean by the word i

but in the truth of the matter is though  

that if uh you will face it out every  single one of us knows that that isn't true  

there is a an as it were a recess of the soul of  the psyche where everybody knows perfectly well

that you are not just this irresponsible little  mouse that's been chucked down into this world

but that you are really doing this work you're  running it only you can't admit it just in  

the same way as you can't admit that you're  responsible for the way your own heart beats

you say oh that's not my doing  i have no control over my heart  

do you have any control over being conscious

do you know how you will you say i intend to take  my hand down from my face and put it on my leg  

i can do that but i don't  know how the hell is done

so that what we mean by the capacity  of voluntary control in the ordinary  

sense of the word is is that  we don't understand it at all

so you might say in in a funny backwards way that  the only kind of control you really understand  

is that where you're not using your will

because you just do it so easy like you open  and close your hand you know how to do it sure  

you know how to do it but you can't put it into  words and explain to someone how to do it say  

well come on aren't you human don't you know  how to open and close your hands do it silly

but we don't realize you see that  just as we know how to do this  

we know equally well how to turn the sun into  light how to blue the sky how to blow the wind  

how to wave the ocean how to digest  food and i might add to be digested  

by bacteria and transformed as we transform  our stakes uh we will in turn be transformed  

but the pattern keeps going and it's always you  only you see you have this marvelous capacity  

to transform yourself without knowing that you're  doing it therefore you keep surprising yourself  

and therefore you keep on doing it  because if you didn't surprise yourself  

you wouldn't go you wouldn't go on doing it it's  just the very fact you see that you seem to be the  

victims of the thing you don't understand and  that you seem to conclude your life every time  

in a wipeout call death where all your control  goes is just exactly that opposite condition  

to what you call being alive that allows  you to be alive only every time it happens  

it's like it's new like every time you're  born it seems like it was the only time

but of course if it wasn't  like that you wouldn't do it

when hindus and buddhists use the word karma  

the basic meaning of it is action  from the sanskrit root kri to do

and therefore there is some error  in the common translation of karma  

as a law of cause and effect  or of cosmic retribution

as a man sows so also shall he reap

uh has a western flavor which is a little causal  the way the buddha put it was slightly different  

this arises that becomes because between  this and that there is a polar relationship

and the full explanation of karma in  buddhist philosophy is called pratitya pada  

which means the interdependent origination  of all the forms and phases of life

practice

and there are 12 links shall we say in the chain  of interdependent origination constituting a  

circle and the existence of the circle depends  on the presence of every one of the links

from one point of view in buddhism the chain  

of interdependent origination is looked upon  as a chain that is to say is a form of bondage

the constituents as it were of the  vicious circle in which most people  

and beings are living which they call  samsara s-a-m-s-a-r-a sang-sara the round  

of birth and death the bhava chakra  the wheel of bhava which is becoming  

and so going round and round and round  in the endless game of hide and seek  

is from one point of view bondage bondage to karma  

and if you study the bhagavad gita which is  not a buddhist book but a hindu scripture

krishna the spokesman of the gita explains

that the wise man is one who does what is  called nishkama karma nishkama ni shkama  

meaning um passionless activity in the sense that

he acts without seeking a result without  being motivated by the fruits of action  

and therefore is not bound by his own action  

you can be bound to sanksara the wheel of  birth and death by iron chains or gold chains  

the chains uh i mean i'm talking in more  or less the language of popular hinduism  

that if you do bad deeds in this life you will get  bad result next time if you do good deeds in this  

life you may be reborn as an angel or as a monk  in which you'll get a better chance of liberation  

but still so long as you're looking for  results be they good or evil you're still bound

now the way in which one  becomes as it were free of karma

involves another buddhist point of view

which is a kind of a different way of looking  at the chain of interdependent origination

it's the way which the japanese called gigi mugee

that is to say the mutual  interpenetration of all things and events

so that you could say that actually in  fact deep the deepest level of reality  

this entire cosmos is a completely  harmonious and blissful manifestation  

of everything in a state of total  enlightenment and mutual compassion

and therefore the task of the buddhist or the  hindu discipline of meditation the sadhana the  

way of spiritual development is to realize that  for everybody to realize it effectively in his own  

life and therefore cease from the illusion that  the universe is a fragmented process of conflict

but first of all we have to be clear about  karma that it is not to be understood in  

the western sense of a law of cause and  effect or of a sort of retribution system  

or a law the word law is most unsuitable for  concepts in eastern indian and chinese philosophy  

the word dharma d-h-a-r-m-a sometimes meaning the  buddhists doctrine or a certain way of life when  

you talk about a person's harma you mean their own  function we would translate swadharma as vocation

the same as the latin sues one's own  

dharma function in this case operation  way of life style of life profession  

trade role means all those things and the one  thing that dharma really never means is law  

although it's often translated that way  because you see you don't get the idea of law  

until you move to a culture where  order is based on the idea of obedience

or in in the west you see are the origins of  law spring from where the laws of the medes  

and the persians the laws of hammurabi  the laws of moses and later roman law  

the only healthy legal tradition we  have in the west is british common law  

which proceeds in an entirely different way from  code law because you see the difference between  

code law and common law is that code law is laid  down by the wisdom of an all-powerful ruler who  

tells everybody how they must behave and they must  obey him but common law is evolved by discussion  

of particular cases rather than referring all the  time to abstract principles which are put down in  

words and the judge the good judge is a wise  man a man with a sense of equity and fair play  

who arbitrates an issue which is debated in  front of him and from the precedent which he  

creates by his decision common law evolves you  see that's a more organic way of producing law  

the code law system which we inherit from  our most ancient theological backgrounds is a  

tyrannical method of law by imposition and so you  must understand that in both hinduism and buddhism  

there is really no fundamental idea of obedience  to a personal ruler certainly not in buddhism  

a little bit sometimes in hinduism but even  then we get terribly mixed up because for  

example i was talking of the bhagavad-gita  this is often translated the lord's song  

now for bhagavan or bhagavat in sanskrit lord  is an english equivalent is quite inappropriate  

because the lord is one who lords it over you  bhagavan is a title of reverence and respect and  

love uh the the song of the beloved would be much  better in a way although it's not quite correct  

from a strict point of view we don't really  have an equivalent for this word the bhagavan

so the the although you see  that has been in india itself uh  

tyrannical rule and although the arthur shastra  as a manual of politics it gives directions to  

a parent as to how to govern by absolute power  going along with this exposition of this very  

machiavellian point of view to government is the  constant advice of this age yes this is what you  

have to do in order to fulfill your office as a  ruler but never forget that you'll never succeed  

the more you try to rule things by force the  more you will stir up violence against you  

and so you can never hold on to your power in  your possessions it will always flow away from you

so there was one of those great rajas of ancient  india who asked a jeweler to make him a ring  

that would restrain him in prosperity  and support him in adversity  

and the jeweler wrote on the ring it will pass

but when we come to the deep  cosmological and metaphysical ideas  

we don't have law in the western  sense and therefore nature is not  

looked upon as something which is an orderly  system because it is obeying a commandment

in the west we inherit the idea of law from those  ancient conceptions of god and it is even passed  

down into science where we discuss laws of nature  but one recognizes more and more in the sciences  

that what we call laws of nature are simply  observed regularities in the way things behave  

and you in order to observe regularities you  must look at things through something regular  

that is to say you must lay a ruler alongside them  

or compare their behavior with  the regular behavior of a clock  

but clocks and rulers are human inventions  they are regular measures which we use  

for comparing the rates of change say a clock is  a measure of a rate of change it's quite arbitrary

but we very easily compare our regulation  measuring devices with what makes things happen  

as if the sun rises because it sticks in the  morning and that's being completely backwards in  

one's thinking and we get into the same confusion  when we imagine for example that money is wealth  

here we have fantastic wealth you know and uh  we have the technological possibility of making  

everybody on earth the enjoyer of an independent  income we can't do it because people say where's  

the money going to come from because they think  money makes prosperity it's the other way around  

it's it's it's physical prosperity which has money  as a way of measuring it but people think money  

has to come from somewhere like uh hydroelectric  power or lumber or iron and it doesn't money is  

something we invent like inches so you remember  the great depression when uh there was a slump  

and what did we have a slump of money there was no  less wealth no less energy no less raw materials  

than there were before but it's like you came  to build work on building a house one day and  

they said sorry you can't build this house  today no inches what do you mean no inches  

not just inches we don't mean we got inches of  lumber yes we've got um inches of metal we've even  

got tape measures but there's a slump in inches as  such you see and people are that crazy they they  

can have a depression uh because they've got no  inches to go around or no dollars that's all a lot  

of nonsense but you see because we get thinking  backwards and making the uh metaphysical tale  

met wag the dog making the law rule things whereas  it doesn't it's me a way of measuring what happens  

and so you see when you get into buddhistic  thought you don't get that confusion  

you're the way you're the other way  around so you're looking at a system  

uh where to go back to the buddha's  words this arises that becomes  

which is a way of saying you  can't have this without that

you can't have here without there you wouldn't  know where here was unless you knew where there  

was and they come into being together you  don't get first here and then there or first  

there and then here these arise interdependently  that's the meaning of interdependent origination

and to grasp the idea of interdependent  origination is as important as the idea  

about seeing uh how things are  related by space and intervals

and seeing therefore that uh  you you tend to look at life  

from a myopic point of view and see  details see the trees and not the forest  

see yourself as something uh loosely  related to everything else that's going on  

and not integral to it you see the the  figure but ignore the background about  

the figure in the background arise mutually  they are to each other as this is to that

and so we really have to rid our brains of the  notion of causality the notion of causality being  

that present sets of circumstances are  the result of past sets of circumstances

and that therefore certain events which are  called causes are responsible for following  

events called effects and all this  is an enormous piece of mumbo-jumbo

because what is not seen and what  is not clear in thinking that way  

is that in physical nature there are no  separate events so startling to people  

but it's really quite easy to see  that there are no events in nature

because you can ask very simply  let's take something called an event

how do we demark it from other events

at what point shall we say uh were  you born you born at parturition

or when the doctor slapped you on  the bottom or cut the umbilical cord  

or when you were conceived or when your father  and mother were first attracted to each other  

when was it when did you begin there's  no way of deciding except arbitrarily  

and for legal purposes we say  you were born at partition

and that's when the astrologer casts your  horoscope except that other astrologers  

disagree and want the conception time  and say that's the real beginning

there isn't a real beginning it goes back and  back and back in an inseparable continuity  

when are you dead that's another big argument  

and you can oh you can get all kinds of ideas  about that so what once you see that an event

is a a term in an intellectual calculus

calculus being the way of measuring  

say curved formations by reducing them  to point instance and counting it you see

but actually the point instants  are imaginary the curve wiggles  

along and it doesn't stutter from point to  point but in calculus you make it do that

so just as uh there are no point instance in  the curve so there are no events in nature

nature is a

constantly fluctuating pattern you can  

only designate particular  wiggles in a pattern arbitrarily

you can count a convex formation as  one wiggle or a concave formation as  

one wiggle then you decide if you call it  one way if you give the convex properties  

the title of wiggle you have to deny it  to the concave properties and vice versa

so when you see that what we  call separate events don't exist  

it becomes nonsense to speak of one event causing  another what you really mean is that the two  

events which you speak of as being causally  related are simply two parts of the same event  

they go with each other in the same way as  this with that the relationship is not causal

it is mutual

and it works two ways in time because  future so-called future events

are not merely passive to past events

but you could easily see when for  example any biological process goes on

you can reason just as well from the future  to the past as from the past to the future  

why do two mammals have sexual intercourse

but it isn't just that they enjoy it  

it's also that they're a very complex system  which does this because it makes babies

and the prospect of baby works in reverse  

and creates desire you can reason that way or  it's silly because the whole process is one and  

when we speak humanly and purposefully i'm going  downtown to buy groceries then a future event  

could be said to be the cause of why  you're now starting out to get into the car

buying groceries and the the difficulty  we have in seeing this to be so  

is that we think in an either or way which is uh  what is called dualism in hindu buddhist thought  

and that liberation is being free from dualism  so when you think in an either or way you see

the figures in the background as moving and  therefore being responsible for their action

but if somebody argues the  other way around say the figures  

are just following lines of force in a field  gravitational principle say we're all human  

beings you see we're all concentrated on our  fact that we're individually rushing around  

and doing this and that but we  don't see that we're equally sucked

and that we move around in  response to all sorts of stimuli

but neither position is adequate you have to see  that our being sucked by all sorts of stimuli  

is exactly the same thing as our apparently  voluntary and deliberate action because what we're  

looking at is not this newtonian game of billiards  where balls roll because they are hit by cues  

what we're involved in is a dance where for  example watch a snake when a snake swims  

there's nothing more beautiful than watching a  snake swim in water lovely motion but you see  

it wiggles along and its wiggle is conceivable  you see as convex or was it concave this way and  

that way and this way and that way now which  side of the snake moves first when it wiggles

so it's very easy to see there now  when we back to interact with the world  

what moves first who starts it the  objective world or the subjective world  

but they are related as this to that you  can't have an object without a subject  

or a subject without an object and have  something known without the knower and  

that gives the show away there isn't any real  distinction between the knower and the known

there's two ways of looking at something yes two  poles of a single process but the knower and the  

known are subsumed as the knowing and all life is  knowing being becoming and uh it isn't something  

in other words that works by the idea of all this  happens because someone shoves it now you see the  

idea all this happens because someone shoves it  is basic to western thinking there is the lord god  

who is the boss and he sloshes this universe  into being and shoves it and sets it going

and you better obey that shove  because he's introduced into it  

uh some recalcitrance by giving to human beings  what the hebrews called the yetza hara the wayward  

spirit so that uh they shall be able to play  certain games on their own because nothing very  

interesting would happen if everybody obeyed god  the whole world would be like a lifeless thing see  

so they had to reason that into it in  order to save face for god practically  

because otherwise he could be blamed  for all the catastrophes that happened  

instead of our being able to say  to each other well it's our fault

but you see then once we are  up against this possibility  

that the distinction between what we do

and what happens to us is obliterated  and therefore we would say with hindus  

and buddhists that if i run into  a catastrophe it is my karma

you see that means far more than that it is a  punishment for something i did wrong in the past  

that is a legalistic view of karma but  a naturalistic or organic view of karma  

is in fact that what happens to me is what i do

and that in a certain sense  uh i want what happens to me  

we can use one to notice how we use this word it  means to desire and it means to lack or to need

we say to somebody you're wanting you're  deficient in something that you need

so it's rather alarming really when you consider  it that uh you always get what you want invariably  

even though you may think that it's entirely  opposed to your wishes but if it's your karma  

everything that happens to you put it in another  way everything that comes to you is a return to  

you of what goes out of you yes obviously that's  absurd if you confine the definition of yourself

to your voluntary conscious behavior  

that's a ridiculous definition of oneself oneself  by any any stretch of the imagination must  

involve far more than the conscious  and voluntary aspects of our behavior

and if we see that it involves intimately and  inescapably the behavior of what we call the  

other the not self the environment and see that  these two are moving together like the two sides  

of the snake when it swims then you get a very  curious feeling you have to be careful of it

if you've got a western background because  

this is what happens to a lot of people  who play around with psychedelic chemicals

there are many many cases of inflation among these  people that is to say when you get this sensation  

that the two sides of the world the  inside and the outside are moving together

you may think i am ruling it i am  god in the western sense of the word

therefore your ego instead of being as  it were integrated and uh transcended  

with all this process merely assumes vast  dimensions has megalomania is blown up  

by the mystical experience and so you get  the holier than thou people going around  

who seem to think that they're above all human  conventions and uh have no obligations to anyone  

or anything because they're divine  and they can do as they damn please

that what they haven't realized is

that doing as you will  isn't a new kind of behavior  

that you suddenly put on and  stay from now on i'm going to  

go around doing as i will you have to realize  first that that's what you've always been doing

and you could look at this from a very simple  point of view it's not a complete point of view  

but you can say well now what  about the people who who did good  

and who did the things that they didn't  want to do you know everybody's mother  

said to us darling sometimes we  have to do things we don't like

oh what about that well you can always say  the kid obeyed the mother and did the thing  

that it didn't like because that was the  better part of wisdom in other words if  

he hadn't done that something worse would have  happened and we choose the lesser of two evils  

and when you find yourself in a situation where  you have to choose the lesser of two evils  

then you say i want out of here and you take the  easiest way you take the line of least resistance  

so that's your doing

now uh you you can pursue that more profoundly  when you stop thinking about human behavior  

as something that responds to the compulsion  of an environment and you can get out of that  

when you see the behavior of the environment  as an essential aspect of you so it isn't as  

it were the environment starting something  which you are therefore compelled to follow

it's the whole system moving together so then  you get in the state of liberated or mystical  

consciousness you very often feel that a  hill is lifting you up as you walk up it  

the ground seems to heave  beneath your feet and up you go

and you get this strange feeling of lightness  of effortlessness walking on air never a care  

you know this uh wonderful sense that there are  no obstructions anywhere there's nothing as it  

we're banging you and making you do that it all  flows together and that's a very common sense  

that's you are actually uh in that state of  consciousness you are perceiving the goings-on the  

tao the course of nature in the way it's happening  but in the ordinary way you've been conditioned  

to resist it to fight it and to use those  sensations of resistance to create a sensory basis  

for what you describe as the ego the ego in  practice is a sense of strain when you are aware  

of i you are aware of a dis basic discomfort  which is located basically between the eyes

somewhere in here a sort of tightness also it's  in other centers too it's in the solar plexus  

and uh there are various physical  centers in other words where this  

constant tension or resistance against it is going  on and that's what you feel when you talk about

i when that tension ceases  you discover immediately  

that the separate ego has disappeared and  that what i refers to is simply the total  

panorama of experience everything that's  happening that's i and i thought i'm not  

obviously i don't know all of it because i  can't inspect all of it with my radar with my  

conscious attention that would be a ridiculous  undertaking to know everything in that sense  

we know it in a much better way as we know how  to grow hair and open and close our hands so

this point of view can be understood if we  clarify the initial problems we have about it  

and i suppose the first problem is if we accept  the notion that everything that happens to us  

is our own karma our own doing then we have  to be very careful of shall we say the devil  

of omnipotence of inflation of uh feeling that  your ego is what is in control of all this and the  

second thing is if you think then that everything  that happens to everybody is what they really  

want to happen then you can absolve yourself  from any qualms about being unkind to someone  

because you could say well the unkindness i did  you was what you really wanted wasn't it you know  

that business about the responsibility of the  person who gets murdered for getting murdered  

there is a curious sense in which a lot  of people go around looking for trouble  

uh freud pointed out quite correctly uh the  psychology of accident prone individuals  

they seem to be attracting  trouble like lights attract moths

and we're all doing that but we  managed to remain unconscious of it

so that we can praise and blame and play the game  which says that's not my fault that's your fault

and so we go around a  portioning faults to everybody  

because if we're going to apportion  praise for what the good things people do  

you can't make praise mean anything  unless you also go around blaming  

praise and blame go together supposing  everybody was acting in a praiseworthy way  

and we praised everybody for everything they'd get  tired of it they wouldn't even notice it anymore  

so so long as you're going to  get a kick out of being praised  

you've got to go around  blaming too it's very simple  

but if you see the folly of that that praising  and blaming are just creating each other

then you don't praise and you don't  blame you just dig the whole thing

and that's why when we encounter very great sages  

you never hear them blame people  and they very rarely praise anyone

you try to start gossip in  the presence of such a person  

and you make a derogatory comment about someone

it's as if you had thrown a rock  into a well and heard no splash  

and a funny feeling because that you  get no response you get no agreement

and uh if you praise somebody there's  also likely nothing to be said  

except perhaps some remark that of course you're  praising the beloved in all its manifestations

and this this disconcerts some people terribly  i've always noticed that real sages never gossip  

never criticize persons and uh because  they understand so well the french saying

to components to understand all is to forgive all  

is so true if you are experienced in just the  ordinary way of dealing with human problems

if you've been a counselor or psychotherapist  or minister or anything like that you very soon  

get to realize how vastly complicated  people are and to see that they really

are in the messes they're  in not because of anything

but that's the way it is and you stop  

blaming people and because you don't blame  people you have open ears and people come  

seek your advice they don't want to come to  someone who's a counselor who will ball them out

it's like dentists who simply accept the fact  that people really don't take care of their teeth  

and realize that the job of a dentist  is precisely to look after people who  

can't be bothered to take care of their teeth  that's why he's in business so a good dentist  

doesn't ball his patients out because  they didn't do this that and the other  

just accept it same with doctors they  know perfectly well that nobody's going  

to live by the rules of health and  they're very vegas to what they are

you know there's every kind of theory  about how you ought to live what is  

healthy but they've changed in fashion  and uh we ought to eat this kind of diet  

in 1921 but by the time it's 1930 they've changed  their ideas altogether by the time it's 1960 it's  

back again to a mixture between 1921 and 1894  something like that you see it's always changing  

so um while the rules that are not so you  see if they were all absurd it would be easy

but they're not all absurd  there's some truth in it always  

but nobody's ever quite sure so the function of  healers and doctors and so on is just to do what  

can be done to stop the mess getting too messy  and they must accept it as that that's their job  

if i were healthy say to the doctor i  wouldn't need you so you're in business

now what about it then uh

we have difficulty in seeing this mutuality  of our relationship to the rest of the world

because it's contrary to common sense

contrary to the way we've been brought up

and therefore we have what i would call an  initial intellectual block to understanding it  

quite apart from any emotional  blocks or anything of that kind  

but obviously we must overcome  that intellectual block  

if we're going to go any further  and actually realize and feel this  

way of life's working in this relationship  between what you do and what happens to you

then the question arises then what do  i do do i go around saying to myself  

all this that's happening to you is what i wanted  

i am inside and outside i am the subjective  and i am the objective and i mean to go around  

thinking thoughts about this so as it were  to talk yourself into this way of feeling

well that's very superficial

because this new sense of relationship to  nature is something much more than an idea  

see ecologists and physicists have the idea that  this is so but they mostly in their private life  

and in their ordinary human behavior just like  other people who don't feel it and who feel  

themselves in a newtonian billiards game even  though they've gone on to quantum mechanics

so that there may be a transition from our  ordinary way of feeling how things go on to the  

new way we have to do something other than think  because actually thinking is causing the trouble  

it is by thinking that we divide the world  into separate events and separate things  

that is calculus and ananda kumaraswamy once  described the life of the liberated being

as a perpetual uncalculated life in the present

and you say wow i don't think i could do that  that saying of jesus and the sermon on the mount  

thou be not anxious for the moral the uncalculated  life if god so clothed the grass of the field  

will he not much more clothe you faithless  ones and i've never met a preacher yet  

who would uh really take that up they all say well  of course that's too hard a saying for most of us  

uh it's not practical everybody has to  take thought for tomorrow and calculate

well

at this point

people can go in two directions there's  one class of people who will say all right  

let's live the uncalculated  life let's not make any plans

and before you know where they are they're  living a filthy pad and uh scrounging around  

and living on petty thievery and so on this is the  usual thing this is uh got into it the wrong way

the first thing to do

is just as i said

whether you like it or not  and whether you know it or not  

the relationship between you and the  environment is always one that is harmonious  

so in the same way you are always living the  uncalculated life you have to find out first  

of all that you're always doing it and that what  you call your calculations and the things you did

were funny little rationalizations

in other words

your ego has about as much control over what  goes on as a child sitting next to its father  

in a car with a plastic steering wheel that  is turning the car the way daddy drives it

because as i pointed out most of  the functions most of the goings on  

in you around you the circumstances of life  have nothing to do with your ego at all

and you don't even know why you make  up your mind to do certain things

we know superficially we were few ideas  it's like when you uh enter into a marriage  

you have really no control over its outcome  in the ordinary sense of ego control  

uh you've taken a colossal gamble in which  you've involved enormous complexes of patterns

and maybe it'll come out all right if  you don't interfere with it too much

you know it's like oppenheimer said it's perfectly  obvious that the whole world is going to hell  

and the only possible way we might stop that  happening is and not to try to prevent it

you know all these wars are started out by people  who think that they're helping someone that

it's going to make things better

so when you begin from the basis  

not of saying i should now live the spontaneous  and improvident and non-calculating style of life

but realize you've always done that  only you rationalize that you didn't  

you always did what you wanted to do

basically

only you said sometimes it was my duty  but you preferred a conception of yourself  

as someone who always does  his duty that flattered you

and so you were still following your own  way now the first thing then is to see that  

that's what's happening so that you don't think  well now there is some special thing i have to do  

to understand this harmonious relationship  between the individual and the world  

because if you work on it that way you will start  from the presupposition that that relationship  

doesn't already exist and has to be brought into  being the thing is it doesn't have to be brought  

into being it's there but now when you see that  that's so it obviously starts to make a difference

you do behave in a different way

but the behavior the new kind of behavior  that is a result of a transformation  

is not forced behavior when you try  to imitate the way a saint behaves  

you have made a forced change and  you know all forced behavior is phony  

it's like someone saying i love you  i love you i love you when you don't  

you feel you ought to but you don't really  and there's something it doesn't ring true

well think of the poor lord listening to all  the prayers of all those people saying i love  

you jesus and he knows they don't they're just  saying this because they think they ought to

and they're very trying

so whenever you do a thing like  that you see you you make a forced  

change now if the change is to happen in  the same way that a seed at proper season  

breaks open and sends up a chute  see it comes from the whole  

force of life itself now when you see that  without your having to do anything see you  

are living the uncalculated life and you're only  pretending you're calculating it and arranging it  

then as it were you will have a grasp of the  total situation and it will you can allow it  

to produce changes in action which are not forced

so this is why there is always a trend  in every kind of spiritual doctrine  

which says something about grace divine grace  there must come about something in you or change  

which you can't produce and if you try to produce  it you will be a victim of spiritual pride  

but on the other hand all  teachers are universities saying  

you've got to make an effort there's some  discipline there is some something you must do

well that's the only way  to get it across to people  

that you as a separate effort maker are a myth  are a phantasm because if you really try to  

control your mind and only think the thoughts  that you think are good thoughts to think

you will find that you're going around in  a circle krishnamurti is awfully good at  

pointing this out when he people ask him how do  you meditate he says why do you want to meditate

why are you concentrating why are you saying  prayers why do you think you should believe in god  

and it always comes up because i'm just a son of  a [ __ ] i mean i'm out for my own good and this  

seems to be the be the way so he says you see you  don't have any genuine love at all it's all fake

and so you have to find first  of all where the genuine love is  

now you love you don't you that's genuine

we won't argue about that but then when you  start from this i gave a talk some time ago to um  

the air force their

camp but lab where they make weapons do all  the research and they got a bunch of us there  

who were ministers and philosophers  and they had the nerve to ask  

us what was our basis for moral  behavior personal moral behavior

well i said my basis for moral  behavior is pure selfishness  

and uh i'm talking after all to realistic people  here and i don't think we need to be sentimental  

and beat about bush after all you're all warriors  and fighters and so on and uh you know how rough  

things are so um i'm going to say to you frankly  uh i'm out for me but of course i don't do it in  

a tactless way i don't go around and hit people  over the head and say give me this give me that  

i much more subtle i say good manners and please  and uh how nice you all are and so on and finally  

people feel uh massaged psychologically  into the state where they'll give

but then i said after that there's some things  that bother me the first one is if i love me

what do i want

and furthermore who am i because if i'm going  to be realistic about getting what i want i've  

got to be pretty sure what it is that's me and  what is the state of desire in me if i am desire  

see if i am a center of desire what's it all  for well i think of all the things i want

but it so turns out that none of them are me

when i say i want dinner i  don't mean i'm gonna eat me up

if i any pleasure i can think of  

is the enjoyment of something that i  hadn't thought of defining as myself

because i like my sensations i like what happens  to my body when i take a fine wine and down it  

but then what's the difference between my  body and the wine if i say i like the wine

i also mean i like me and  the wine together the mixture

but then i don't eat you or a friend or a lover  

in the same way as i drink wine i  live in association and like this

but then i'm loving things that aren't formally  supposed to be me and as i go into it in other  

words as i investigate what i mean by me  i find that i can't put any limits on it

that i cannot experience me without you or without  the other they're inseparable but you don't find  

this out until you investigate it until you  really go into the question what do i want  

and that's the most important  investigation anyone can make  

which i'm going to into in the next  session uh the question of power  

and all these military men you  think they think they want power

and so i said to them some very  subversive and undermining things  

without anybody knowing it  until long after i'd left