Worldly Religions: The Lotus Sutra

00:00
00:00
Audio loading...

Welcome! You can log in or create an account to save favorites, edit keywords, transcripts, and more.

This talk will not appear in the main Search results:
Unlisted
Serial: 
SF-03047
Description: 

#25

Photos: 
Auto-Generated Transcript

probation on the spoken word of allah want you can write to him a box three or three sausalito california zip code is nine four nine six five will repeat the address with the end of today's talk now here is part two of the talk on death and rebirth
birth
you will have caught three of eyes
that in these past three sessions i've been giving you some very heady stuff
and as a consequence of it you can get a sort of vertiginous feeling

i remember when i was a child
being in a sports event which we call an egg and spoon race
the object of it was that you were given get each person was given a wooden spoon and they
china egg and are the kind who put his chickens nesta encourage them to delay
and we had to go from start to finish without dropping the egg off the spoon if you drop the egg you have to pick it up again on the spoon without using your fingers
and carry it out the spoon to the finishing line
well i was out alone in front and all the other children drop their eggs
am i turned round and watched
the other children picking up their eggs and all the parents and teachers and everybody on the sidelines were urging me to continue so that i would win the race
but for some reason i wouldn't go on without them
not funny
now i didn't call your attention likewise to this phenomenon yesterday that when you talk into a microphone
and you're wearing earphones and as the delaying circuits so that you hear your own voice
about a second later than you speak
you'll get into this funny situation and waiting for the other fellow to go on
you have put off and i pointed out that the same thing's happening to you all the time
that something comes at you
as if it was from somewhere else all together and as what you'd call the involved a the involuntary component
our the objective component of your experience
you know what the voluntary as you seem to be in charge of that you do that
but then an echo comes back to you
and that echo is what you call involuntary
now mind you i'm not saying
quite what is a philosophical doctrine called solipsism
solipsism is the doctrine that only you exist and that everybody else's in your dream
i always want to imagine a conference of subsists assembled to argue as to what each one of them israeli there ha we're not doing it that way you see but what we are saying if it could be set at all
is that each one of us
is
a special expression
of everything
now everything isn't simply the sum total of all things
everything
let's face it can't be talked about
are defined
for the same reason that you can't buy your own teeth
so for want of any better expression will say there is the total energy of the universe
and that energy expresses itself in fact it expresses all of itself as each one of us
and each one of us is therefore a unique
manifestation
of what the universe can do
and each one of us is creating
a different universe
and yet they're really all the same
only naturally we wouldn't know what we meant by same unless we knew what we meant by different
so this is it not therefore yeah you really are in charge
of what happens
only the you that is in charge is not the ego that is to say it is not the all image of yourself plus as i explained to you yesterday the constant sense of physical tension
whereby we are trying to achieve neurological results by muscular effort
don't forget that we have this chronic tension in us
of clenching your teeth and cetera
and it's actually it localizes itself between your eyes about here
and with other people's
it might localize itself here if you're getting stomach ulcers for example is because your localizing your chronic tension in here
other people it here
chinese and japanese always talk of the psychic center as being in this position but westerners think of it here
little way behind the eyes and halfway between the ears
that's where you are that only means that is where the center of futile tension is
so the image of yourself that is the ego
is a fraud
and attention is useless
doesn't achieve any result it's like you're taking off in a jet airliner
and you think you've gone far too far down the runway and i'm not up in the air yet and you find yourself pulling up at your seatbelt to encourage the plane to get off useless doesn't do a damn thing so all these things that we do to pull yourself together get yourself and your right mind all these strange things are completely useless just
like that
ha
so you see the whole of what you're experiencing
is happening
in which there's no master and no slave
it's not being done to you because there isn't any use separate from it you're not in charge of it because there isn't any use separate from it to make it a bay see is just one happening and that's the way things go and it's very intelligent
so we say well there's no alternative but to trust it
well who's gonna trust it
there's no one separate from it
who ought to trust it all accepted when a psychiatrist's tells you are a psychotherapist tells you that you should accept yourself
you discover that one of the things you have to accept is that there are certain things you don't accept
now can you deal with that the whole idea of telling you to accept yourself is simply a gimmick
it's that saying control yourself
well if you try hard enough you'll find that you can't
i try hard enough to accept yourself and you'll find that you can't and the reason why you can't
is not that you've been confronted with the task that is too difficult but the you've been confronted with a task that is nonsensical
because there is no you separate from you to accept yourself
as krishnamurti points out ceaselessly
there is no thinker separate from the thoughts the so-called thinker is one of the thoughts the so-called phila is the feelings for example if i say i see a site
i hear a sound
nonsense
because if i hear the sound is already there if i see the site is already there the seeing on the side of the same
see it is raining joke it's the lightning flashed what's the difference between the flash and the lightning how is the one thing called lightning which does another thing called flash see the redundancy in our language now that redundancy is due to a phenomenon of echo
what happens is this that your cortex over lies your fundamental brain the thalamic center and then the cortex overlays it the cortex performs the same function and your nervous system that the sounding box and a guitar or of
violin does for the string
it echoes it
it gives it residence as why when you sing in the bathtub your voice is better and if you're sick in the open air because you got a resonant chamber so your cortex enables you to know that you know
when you are happy it tells you you're happy otherwise you wouldn't know see when you are sad it tells you go sad because it echoes it
but the echo just like hearing yourself a second later on the microphone gives you the impression that just split
there are to use
the wrong but it gives you that impression
and therefore because of having that impression you can be in conflict with yourself

and you can go around holding a club over yourself all the time
and you can get this feeling therefore which is all connected with this echo phenomenon of the two sides of experience what i do and what happens to me
but now i think i've made it in it clear to you
that the division between what i do and what happens to me as arbitrary
if you eliminate
the false notion
are being something else than the universe
then all that is going on as the universe that happening
and no one is doing it
because we've got to a pure verb without any now
so there is the happening the patterning
it is intelligent
why
how look at a vegetable look at the way a plant is organized
the beautiful structure say of the fun
you look at a fan or arose
and say how wonderful it is god must have made it
why do you introduce that unnecessary point
it isn't that the rose is a product of intelligence it is that the roses itself intelligence
how does intelligence work
it is energy following the line of least resistance
this is not a straight line
a straight line is not necessarily the shortest distance between two points
depends what kind of surface you're playing on
so the world is a watercourse
and i mentioned to you i think theodore fangs book sensitive chaos
where he is produced all these photographs of the patterns of flowing water
and shows you that all physical forms are related to these patterns of water taking the line of least resistance and we remember too that gravity is always falling
so therefore
we would say as a consequence of this don't worry
relax
i've just been talking with somebody
who is
terribly worried
about another person
who has shall we say a psychological problem
and i have been trying to show her
that although one might naturally worry because of love and concern the worrying is not helping the situation in fact it is making it worse
because the person about whom she is worrying is worried that she worries
and feels guilty for causing the suffering of worrying in the other person you say that
the third you know but we do this
so i'm saying to you
forget it stop worrying now as it is that that this is some sort of challenge to your muscles and i'll grind your muscles that are you stop that thing worrying but the there simply is no reason to worry
it's like the story
of the purely automatic ss team plane that takes off from new york
for tokyo will arrive and forty minutes
and as a take off cause voice says
ladies and gentlemen
this aircraft is entirely under automatic control
everything has been worked out by the most elaborate the efficient computers
so that no human error can enter into any process and therefore there's absolutely no reason for you to worry to worry to worry worry worry worry will have a to
a
ha
well so there isn't
mean what would it be
now clearly
let's face it
you can get a kind of cancer say
that will give a bad smell
and cause you certain vibrator sensations
that will be interpreted as pain
and everybody around you will tell you how miserable you are
now wringing their hands and come on and pity you and that'll make it much worse
and they will go through rituals
are putting you in a place
and defining you are sick
when all you are as different
go and study in nature just walk out and look at your vegetables and they've got swellings on them and all kinds of funny things and they're eaten by caterpillars
and you know you go up to a cabbage was a great bunch of caterpillars working on it or snails on a lettuce and say ah you shouldn't have snails
by one of the snails thing
see you telling us to get outta here we've just as much right to live as this letters
because if
the disease of one organism is the health of another
which are you
and it entirely depends on how you define yourself
i'm sorry but this is the case
you don't have to define yourself in the way you've been taught to

well therefore as i started out by saying when you realize that that you could define yourself as the whole universe if you have the nerve
then you get to feel a bit vertiginous like myself out in front and the egg and spoon race
yeah what's up to you to carry on what do you do
and so this raises the practical questions
i don't know why i say practical will reserve that for a moment but it over there but it raises the practical questions of behavior conduct ethics
i pointed out that if you resign yourself to the fact that you are nothing at all
the tour as good as dead now that you'll find you'll get an enormous access of physical energy physical and psychic energy suddenly feel when you know all this energy i've been wasting on worrying is available for something else
now in exactly the same way
that energy
can be seen to turn out to be a kind of love
supposing at this moment somebody gave you a check for a million dollars that wouldn't bounce
how would you do
you wouldn't go out and beat somebody up with you
your natural inclination if you gotta check for a million dollars right now would be to give a party
your invite all your friends in
and they live it up my expense
because when we are happy we want to share it
because then just as the cortex by resonating tells us what goes on in the thalamic center so if i'm happy because i suddenly got a million dollars and i make you happy this is another form of echoing of a resonating
so i make my happen as echo
as the joy of
singing you see in say a great cathedral they let me loose on grace cathedral in san francisco the other day and i did a magical chance to dedicate the island of alcatraz to the rivers and the pelicans and the sea gulls
and so i could do this child and this incredible echo space
of
so in the same way when there is joy and there's joy as blake said energy is eternal delight energy is joy
and you have this thing and you don't need you know you don't need to use it against itself anymore
you don't need to worry anymore
you can worry you're perfectly free to worry therefore you don't need to see so you have this thing going and you say to everybody else come on around
now look also
i'm not gonna take care of you all and assume responsibility for you because if i do i shall be depriving you of the same joy i have no other words if you hang onto my energy is if you didn't have your own you won't have discovered your own secret
so don't expect me to carry the whole burden
but just for the time being i feel so full of delight that i want to include all you in the party
bob the party only works if it awakens you to the fact that you have the same possibility
so we get the principle that in
mahayana buddhist philosophy is called gigi magee
this is a japanese term
which signifies the mutual interpenetration of all things and events a g means a thing event
that is to say
any aspect or feature of the world process
that you can point out as being particular and peculiar
that's a g
instead of trying to translated into english simply absorb the word g into your language
it's like a wiggle
you may have difficulty in finding out where a wiggle begins and ends but supposing you know we have a wiggle like that i do it now locked see i did this and i identified a wiggle and then we agreed to ignore the fact that my hand fell back to my lap
we're going here but we identified this particular part of the wiggle say that's a g
r g g more gay means that between one g and another
see when we is set it new we said our stops here that man down
between one g and another is move which means no gas block
now that also means that every event that occurs in the universe
implies all the other events that occur in the universe because the universe is all the other events
and they use as an image of this and indra's net of jewels imagine a multi-dimensional spider's web in the dawn covered with dewdrops
and look in any dewdrop and you will see the reflection of all the others
not only that but in the reflection of any other dewdrop you will see that reflection reflecting all the other reflections forever
this is the way our brain is structured every neuron contains the possibility of functioning as any other neurons
it's this is the the art of what's is called a hologram
whereby you can take a photographic negative
cut out a small square from it
place that square and a laser beams with a certain kind of photography and it will restore the rest of the photograph from which it was cut
magic pure and simple magic
because the crystalline structure in that part of the negative implied the crystalline structure and the rest of it
you will find that the or reproduction your holographic reproduction is vague at the edges
in contradistinction to the original negative
but it will pick up things that just are not there are we think they're not there
so it exactly the same way is a scientist to great anthropologist
in an entirely different universe from this were to receive a package containing a human tooth
and he would study at completely he would reconstruct
the whole of this galaxy from it
because he would realize that only in the context of such a galaxy good such a tooth exist
so that therefore everything implies everything else that is gigi budget
that's how we fit together and we can consider this in a social way
for example
i am here
not merely because i told you that i was coming
but also because in a certain way you invited me

you listen to me
not because i am an authority
but because you say i am
by the very fact of sitting and listening
so it takes you to create me
as much as it takes me to tell you who you are namely incarnations of god
it's not funny
a
so then in this vertiginous situation where we find we're on our own
comes the great question well what to do
but let me first point up this is the only situation from which you can rarely do anything

because you know it's not necessary to do anything at all
you want to you can commit suicide
i'll just sit in the sand fan yourself
but when we saw that we got all that energy
from being willing to be nothing which is what we are
what are we gonna do
but i've discussed this at great length with gary snyder
who is a great zen buddhist aficionados a poet
and they
student of amerindian culture
and very very interested in ecology
and he says the only people who are fit
to work for good ecological causes
are those who know that it is not necessary to do it
the only people who are fit to survive or those who know it is not necessary to survive
if you think it is necessary to go on living you are not fit to go on living
why
because you are in a double bond
life is a spontaneous process that happens as the chinese it's a young of itself if you say to that process you must happen
you ball it up
so i say to someone you've got to love me see i command you to love me the original double bind as i explained to you yesterday is that you are required
to do that which will be acceptable only if you do it voluntarily
which is sheer nonsense
but on the other hand it seems like nonsense because of it's paradoxical character to say that you can be creative only if you know you don't have to be

one could have understood this by studying the christian doctrine of god
this is extremely funny
you see there isn't a christian doctrine of man
if you ask a preacher what a soul is he won't be able to tell you
you mumble and mother and destiny avoid the question somehow if you ask him what god is you'll have a great deal of information
now one of the attributes of god is an use word i say at it
a s e i t y i'll say it he
and that is a latin version of the chinese said done what is so i'll say of itself
in other words god is not the result of anything else god isn't pushed around god as the unmoved that is to say i'm pushed mover
and so the christians are saying that that is the state of reality it's an unmoved mover nothing pushes it around so how does it decide what to do

when you are united with god or realize that you always were you are in a state of anxiety
what do you want to do
we will look over your shoulder and say please
tell me what i'm supposed to do
well that's like mcluhan saying you're driving looking in the rear vision mirror
what will you do
where's the guideline
why do you think you need a guideline
but look since we have all found that when we're in this state of joyous
finding out that there's nothing to worry about we feel in a celebrate are removed and would like to resonate it as we do with are caught ca taxes with other people
it's pretty obvious that the path is
communicate love each other

don't you know that
you've seen fundamentally that another person can't really injure you
i'm sure some of you have tried this sit in front of another person maybe a total stranger and look straight into their eyes
don't be embarrassed the tesla
schools
if you do that
you can go on looking
and you go as it were through the eyes in in in in the center of the universe
oh you might do it by holding hands
oh by kissing
but you through that method
you enter the other person's sense organ
and you follow it down
knowing that the other person feels you and just the same way you feel them down down down down into the center of the thing

and what do you find
at the end of the line
she
or i'd pursue it
and you'll find that this system exists
if we intellectualized it only in terms of
the biosphere the ecosystem of the planet earth which in turn exists only in terms of the solar system which in turn exists only in terms of the galaxy etc
so that when you really look into the eyes or touch the hands of another person
you ultimately are looking at your own center
one of the funniest experiences i've had was talking to lady who was a very fine psychotherapist
very pretty
woman
ah of mature years
and she was looking at me and saying yes i understand what you say intellectually but i still don't really know it
and it was the funniest thing because the expression on the face belied what the eyes said to me
in the eyes i could see the original mother goddess
looking straight at me but the expert facial expression was saying what me
a

so you know look at yourself in the mirror
i'll listen to the sound of your own voice
that's what mantra chanting is for

and wonder you know what is this year going on
wow
so that you can overcome self consciousness and its problems by pushing it to an extreme become a self conscious as possible that was the point that we brought up this morning
when
somebody raised the question about i and me i'm thinking about what i really is or tennyson saying his name to himself over again become a self consciousness you could possibly get
and then suddenly you will see
the whole secret
of yourself as a function of universe
then there follows as i've suggested
the compassionate feeling to other people
the sense that we've got a glorious thing that we may just as well share and celebrate together
this seems to me to be the only possible foundation we can get out of this for an ethic
now we know we've got one hell of an ethical problem for the simple reason are too many people
when i was going for a walk with selig morgan rough who lives around big sur
we came across a sorrow plant covered with the most luscious fat green fly they were rarely prospering that was progress the next day there was nothing but grey dust
because had eaten the whole weed and they themselves have perished
and selig said that can happen to us
so when we say get densely overpopulated we begin to consider what people we can define as non-human so as to get rid of them
when one gets rid of people won't always has to define them first does not being true human beings on job for that
so that we say an insane person has no soul
and therefore doesn't really feel it if we murder him like an animal or a plum we define as having no souls so we can kill it they don't really feel it
their feelings are purely mechanical it's like you had an automatic man which made protests when you hit it on the head but she was there were are purely automatic there's nobody in here who feels it
but there always is someone inside everything even the plants that feels it
when the arabs have a crazy person in their village instead of saying he's not human they say treat him with respect because his soul has gone to allah
isn't that interesting
when in india you'll get a person who has called must
which is there their equivalent of crazy they say be be very careful this is a specially enchanted been
epileptics used to be thought of as bewitched and therefore somebody you treat with great respect
even in these densely overpopulated countries
in japan which has always been overpopulated
what they have done
until we came in unless the whole thing up
is they learn to live together by being incredibly polite
you learn you live in a house where the walls offer no protection against sound everybody knows who farts who bubs who's making love to who but they have a tacit agreement to hear but not listen
to see but not look ah
this is called in sanskrit a picture
the picture means
in religious contexts equanimity in a political context it means overlooking
you pretend you didn't see
and this is a very necessary virtue
if we're going to be put together densely because what it does infection is it creates space

now we saw earlier that the gravitational fields of falling stars
is all right because there's so much space
but the chances of their colliding a minimal

now let's take another population instead of stars let's take flies
flies constitute is it well
perhaps not in the city but emirate in the countryside
flies constitute a continuous liquid of beans
if you get a fly trap
like a big stinky which attracts all the flies and kills them
it's just like making a hole in the middle of the ocean
simply more and more flies come and fill it up
and you'll become a vortex to which the liquid flows so don't do it
you'll get more flies passing through you just because you have a fly trap
but in the state of nature the flies have their territory see like birds or anything else and they stay at a certain volume
a certain volume of flies is always in the air just as a certain volume of stars is in space
and in order to function it has to have enough space
whatever that may be
so in the same way in order for you and i to function we have to have enough space now supposing things developed to the point where we don't have enough what we call physical space
supposing it so comes it's three of us have to live in one room
then we create extra space by politeness
by curtis i ritual
and that eases the situation
this is what the japanese have done for centuries
and that's what we have to learn because we are all going to be overcrowded in a very short time
now therefore certain other things flow from this
in creating the space of politeness there are certain groups of people who in one way or another at a disadvantage
like women
like negroes
who have in fact
not been accorded the same rights as the dominant male white controllers of the scene

these problems can be made impossible

when
the persecuted group
get self conscious in such a way as to interpret even a friendly advances and offense
i know some far out women's lib characters for whom woman is a dirty word like nigga
and there is nothing that i as a man can say
to conciliate
because it's intensely important to them that they be irreconcilable to the system
and there are black panthers
who take the same attitude
say you're a righty and you can't help it don't come on to me like you're anything else than a whitey
don't pretend
we don't need you
and they can come a point where the women can say to the men
you're a man you can't help it we don't need you
how ridiculous they see as how would you know you were white and list of a black people
haven't you know who who were a man of there were women
so somewhere along the line is there's gotta be a big laugh
about this absolutely ridiculous notion
that is can exist without isn't
the night can exist without the day
something can exist without nothing
so let's take an intermission
even been listening to the late alan watts with a talk entitled death and rebirth part to its nine one seven be in the ellen wants tape catalog and if you'd like that catalog you send a self-addressed envelope large size if possible to emmy a box three or three sausalito nine for
four nine six five california it's emmy a box three or three sausalito nine four nine six five

some folks like to get away take a holiday
from the neighborhood
up a flight to miami beach
i'm taking a greyhound
that's line
i'm in new york state of mind

and he
hey is
any of the
on a start
now just snap
i know this
eleven
the the

sprites honest
dice man
i know this
lana
banana
the
not enough

sarah
i just learned
i just love him
i just love him

the
i just love man
no yeah yeah
the
the
is

too
the

lg has no

i guess
love
lol
the

my
how the time goes by
ah
how the time go wrong and by
oh wow the star stabbed and this and we say that year and listen to that who dhabi as cry a
oh
how you feel and and to
ah know who love me like a gym
oh wow the box of god no tan a class made of cotton is that the sky
amie wow low gets yeah law and the last movie gets malla and by ah shoot be leaving you
but ah that they know the way you laugh
then that look at you and i
so
and side
those man
ah
at a time goes by
apple

the

the
no
andy mean wow that low gets yeah
i mean ah lou guess malla and by ah should me the you but ah know that they don't believe a laugh
that that live in your i am
so then yeah and fan
those bad
oh boo my
oh
the time goes by

if it's last and

making me
the baby
at first thing is he
and
the
just like the stars
the
the

that's
no
lily's
any pets the a startling i do
i'm not
the

and allow on sale today
the

we'll be able to dream that jennifer with
and then i'm going to show no children and be includes
interested
the least
then i do
the

i'm talking about this afternoon
at some of the aesthetic principles underlying both chinese and japanese art
and there
deriving from these taoists taken ballistic philosophers that have inspired them
and to speak about them fairly technically
in the language of in there are certain words used which are the foundations of their aesthetic ideas
one of these words as the uncapped blog
and another is unbleached silk
and as i already intimated and talking to you about the dow was view of the relationship of man and nature
i
the taoists
make a distinction between the natural and the artificial
and seem to be all on the side of the natural and rather against the artificial
although you must be cautioned against taking this too seriously
to literally
you might say of course that the distinction between the artificial and natural as an artificial distinction because really and truly a human building is no more no less artificial than a bird's nest
but
but the taoists
use a kind of art
and a kind of poetry which you could call indicative
that is to say
while understanding that everything that man does his natural some things that he does a more natural than others
that is to say they look more natural they they go that way
and so the idea of unbleached silk
main soak in the raw raw silk natural silk and so in the same way the uncurbed block is the sort of stone that would be selected for a chinese or japanese garden
chinese stones
ten as i see it to be rather more elaborate rather more fussy the japanese stones and i think that in the art of bonsai wiki which means growing rocks the japanese are a bit more sophisticated than the chinese although this doesn't doesn't happen
but the japanese are masters at growing rocks
so this rock that you would find in a japanese garden is the uncapped blog even though it may have been what has happened really it's what we call in the west and object through bay where the artist instead of making something selected
he finds a glorious thing and shares his finding about the people and about finding as a work of art
and you see that is connected with the whole thought in
this tradition of aesthetics in the far east that superb art is a work of nature
does not something imposed upon major even though as you seen
in many japanese gardens that there was very complex espalier work
and that the an enormous amount of pruning and trimming is done and in fact
the discipline of the garden is amazing the complicated and pain and requires a great deal of care
but the object always is
through the discipline of the art to make the garden seem more natural than it would look if you left to itself who understand that is to work upon nature with skill and craft but to move in the direction in which nature is already going
so that
the uncapped block may be extended into a sculpture
but what the cover to make the blog uncover even when the sculpture is finished what the sculptor is going to ask the block in the first place is what do you want to become
in other words along what lines of you already started in the direction of the sculptor and i went i will cooperate with you and bring it to completion
so that's the principle really you see that underlies judo
judo means the gentle way the gentle dow
and it is the art of going along with nature it is also called way or murray and japanese and
not
doing nothing literally not being because after all it's man's nature to act now you can't do nothing literally
but to act louis without
ah
really it's is to act without feeling that your actions are separate from nature
when you feel that everything you do
is
simply part of the course of things
then the way in which you do things is changed he wouldn't think so it doesn't logical that it should be
but nevertheless if you really feel that you can't deviate from the doll that it lies behind everything that you do your type of action the on your style of behavior will in fact be changed
and it will be in that will tend to be in the direction
of your seeming to other people in some ways to be more passive
then you might ordinarily be
and the difficulty here is that
westerners were may hear about
buddhism and taoism and the sort of thing they interpreted one sidedly as passivity
and don't see that what sometimes looks like passivity
it is cleverness
you as business often know if you live letters unanswered for a month when it returned the many of them have already answered themselves
and sometimes when you sit and do nothing you avoid making very serious mistakes
which would have arisen if you had acted prematurely if you've done something about it
ah i practice this inactivity of this kind for many years and i've always been accused of being lucky
because when i should have done something been up and at it i was just went and sat and did nothing and then when it turned out alright
this is terrible
first like know i know you haven't said
a tribes still valid you
yeah they are inside and with anyway this this is so and so
ah this tendency to look in active and to go in the direction in the arts of a kind of primitive city
which we know in the word shibori
the quality called chivalry in japan
is a certain kind of sophisticated primitive city
listen to these contradictions these paradoxes the sophisticated permittivity controlled accident
ah
but where are you see
man and nature are really collaborating man as the controller the reason or the logical being and yet at the same time
i'm not ruining life
by making it all logic and all control
to have logic and to have control
that is to say in shot to have order
you have to have randomness because where there is no randomness order cannot manifest itself
well now
emma
the vocabulary
of japanese aesthetics that are a number of terms which are you should understand thoroughly
and
a which sure our basic
the fastest sabi
and that goes along with something that rhymes with it wabi so often japanese people speak of wabi-sabi or hobby lobby has a kind of mood of the art of of a sudden art feeding on of zen taste
and
then there is a wide array which i've mentioned in passing
as another kind of move there is you again
there is for you
ah such words which
designate the basic moods are painting and poetry and so on
now to begin with saudi
the basic feeling of sabi his loneliness
one of the great paintings that illustrate sabi is the lonely crow on a tree branch
ah it is the feeling of the hermit it is the feeling which the garden artist tries to create when in a crowded country he wants to give you the sensation of being a way off in a mountain landscape
so this sense you see of solitariness are being able to wander off on your own
is sabi and is a thing of course that any sane person has to have one has to have privacy you'll have to have space in which to be alone
i so as not to become a rubber stamp
see it's often thought that eastern philosophy is against individuality
and this is not true
the unity of man in the universe
is not a loss or emerging of personality in something impersonal
it's more like
the fact that when individuality when personality is known and experienced as an expression of the whole cosmos then the person becomes more individual not less individual but he becomes individual in a non strident way
in a way that has in it the spirit of the uncalled block and the unbleached silk
and so one of the qualities of this is solitariness
the great chinese poem which has sabi in it is preeminently is asking for the master i asked the boy beneath the pines he says the master's gone alone herb gathering somewhere on the mount clouded and whereabouts unknown
so all the the whole idea is the of of them that
wherever you stand
if you
realized then you create a mountain
everywhere is the mountain solitude even in the middle of an uproar this is hobby
and for this reason than an enormous amount of the subject matter of the far east and painting and poetry is solitude
the love of solitude
now that is next wabi
this is a more difficult idea
let's imagine that you are feeling very bad about something of depressed the world is too much with you
just you're sick of life
and then quite surprisingly
you'll notice
a small weed growing underneath a hedge
and this weed is really after all not just to be dismissed as a weed but some rather lovely design there is in the nature of this plant
i'm supposing
you are bothered by financial uproar was politics and everything like that and we were sitting on a beach and you become aware of the water endlessly crossing pebbles
and you'll get a sense that this goes on forever and ever and ever it has long before you were thought of long before all human history and piles schemes and so on and will endure long after
but it's something strikes you but it's very simple very ordinary like the water on the pebbles or like the little weed under the hedge
ah
that suggests a kind of amazing eternal reliability of nature care se and san francisco ninety five that in the very humble form goes on and on and on and whatever human beings may do this everlasting sanity persists
now that strange
flip from the mood of depression to the mood of a certain consolation in this weed is wabi
now don't let me be to dictatorial i'm trying to explain these things through examples rather than through trying to give you philosophical definitions
it's better to give examples
than to pin it down with the abstract terminologies
wabi comes out in the haiku very much a brush woodgate and for a lock the snail
this is bobby
this is all there is the path comes to an end among the parsley
which has a touch of you get but but also wabi because the the the parsley is this will everybody has passed the in the gun
now
next
this word i want a
a w a r e
is there much connected with the buddhist feeling for the transience of life
that
everything is change
and nothing at all can be held onto or possessed
this feeling of transients is at the root of the philosophy of poverty that exists in buddhism and is as a curious difference in it from the christian philosophy of poverty as say explained by st francis of assisi its cognate to
it's like it but a little subtle difference
somehow one feels in the christian emphasis on poverty that poverty contrasts with richness as good to evil
in other words poverty is unpleasant but it's something you ought to share with the poor who live unpleasant lives
so if you are to expiate your sins well you ought to be poor
and to
live roughly
and so it for this reason the in buddhism one would not say so much poverty as one would say simplicity
not going without not
not clinging the things because it's good for you
but because it is actually the happiest way to live
because nothing is more terrifying than the state of chronic anxiety which one has if you are subject to the illusion that something or other in life could be held on to and safeguarded
and nothing can so the acceptance of everything flowing away
is absolutely basic
to freedom
to being a and once we a cloud water person who dressed like cloud and flows like water
but endless
we mustn't take ourselves too ridiculously i mean naturally all human beings having them a certain thing
so you can't let go totally you wouldn't be human if you did you can't be just a leaf on the wind or just a ball and a mountain stream to use as an poetic phrase because if you were that you wouldn't be human just as i pointed out that a person with no emotions
who was completely control his emotions as a stone buddha so a person who would be completely let go
would also be some kind of an inanimate object
so is in very definitely emphasizes
ah
being human
being perfectly human as it's ideal and so to be perfectly human
one must have not a state of absolute detachment
but a state of detachment which contains a little bit of resistance
a certain clinging still they say in india have a diva looked at a man who is liberated in this world that he has to cultivate a few mild bad habits in order to stay in the body because if he were absolutely perfect he would disappear from manifestation
and so the
the yogi great yogi is maybe he smokes a cigarette or has a bad temper case me something that keeps him human
and that thing little thing is very important the is like the salt in a stew
ah it's it it's the it grounds him
well this is another way of saying that even a very great sage a great buddha
will have in him a touch of regret
that life is fleeting because if he doesn't have that touch of regret he's not human and he is incapable of compassion towards people who regret very much that life is fleeting
so the mood ira
is that touch of regret
ah nostalgia
of
you know that poem with speaks of the feeling of a banquet hall deserted
here it is has been a great banquet you know and that's i all the guests have gone home andrew empty glasses and dirty plates and crushed napkins and all sorts of things all over and somehow the echo of voices and merriment is still there
and so this mood
i worry comes up so even a very great person you should feel that because the price otherwise is not be human
ah
so for this reason
ah
buddhist and taoist poetry is not an emotional
it's not
the humanized
and so somehow speaks very much to us as people
and
it does not have in it the feeling
that we aren't instead to turn into saints or superman
that's that the humane thing about this philosophy of life
the next word special term is fully
who do you means literally
wind flow
who is the character for wind real means flowing
and the dictionary is translated elegance and this won't do
who do
first of all you must remember that the character that word wind
is used in chinese and japanese like to indicate atmosphere
the a place
so when a person has say a certain school of poetry or philosophy it's called the family wind
that means that the atmosphere the slump the attitude of this particular school
so that meaning of wind atmosphere comes into the expression for you
and for you is
like this
here is a man of fishing
and he's sitting in the evening in the twilight on the edge of a river
and with his fishing rod in a lonely little boat ah tied up by the bank
now if this man is fishing with his mind and simply on catching fish this is not for you
but if he's also digging the atmosphere
it's for you
to flow with the wind and sea to dig the atmosphere american offers the most beautiful possibilities of translation of for in our and comfortable slang for some oriental ideas
for you is that the the you know to get with it to flow with it
and not again you see in the sense of the merely passive leaf flowing on the wind
but
for you
as in it you see a touch of self consciousness like that man fishing
now the you would think if you started taoist philosophy that this would be very bad dancer somewhere says that
a comfortable belt is one that you don't feel
and you are unaware of it
that's not the most comfortable belt
are comfortable shoes would you be completely unconscious that comfortable shoes know
something better than comfortable shoes or shoes that you'll know are comfortable
so in the same way
a liquid self consciousness
add something to life
it's one thing to be happy and not know it
it's another thing to be happy and know it
it's like that one's voice in the shower or bathtub has more residents than one's voice in the open out and that's why temples of cathedrals and resonating boxes for guitars and drums and things are created to give this little quality of echo
for all echo is a certain kind of feedback which enables you to reflect upon what you're doing and to know that you know
so one might say that ordinary people are borders but they don't know it
and the buddha is one who knows he's a buddha
only
they don't let you settle for this comfortably and easily because really to know is also defined does not to know
in the upanishads it has said that if you think you you know what brought one is you will have yet some study to be done for those who know brahman do not know brahman and those who do not know brahman really know
now all those paradoxical language
is intended
to keep you confused
so that you can't say i've got it
so it but this position as he is not one sided
there is something about being human about being self conscious is he that is not a
mistake of nature
not a completely evil fall into self awareness but self awareness although it creates all kinds of problems because through self awareness when in the human being is in some sense of self frustrating mechanism he knows that he's gonna die and the price of being able
oil to control the future is to know that she in the long run you won't be able to and worry about that
but also with self consciousness goes to the possibility
our residents are realization of becoming enlightened liberated and knowing it and therefore able to enjoy it
so
who you
add this to the dimension of going with it something more than the mere passivity of going with but knowing that you're going
now but it does at the same time the it isn't entirely wrong that the dictionary is of translated it elegance
if you could say for you
his style
when we say somebody really has style
now but this designates a particular kind of style
it is the style
ugh
what one might call the elegant poor man
the aristocratic bomb
the the rich pauper you see
now you find that a good deal in the things that we've been seen
we've gone to many temples well
nobody really owns anything
and yet in a way their luxurious
this is for you
the next word you again
f u r y you fool you
i have spoken about you again but i haven't told you the basic symbol of eugen as the flour which grows from iraq
and so there's something about that which is improbable mysterious contradictory that a flower could come out of iraq
but
you can
more than any other of these terms defies translation
the two characters which i shall draw for you shortly
i rather interesting one the first character you
shows the basic form of a mountain
and then the mountain is combined
with a characters indicating dark darkness to see in the character of a mountain
which is simply
like this that are these things he other to the valleys on the dock has put in the valley say in each cakes
now do
you get so the idea of the deep valley
as a poem which says
the wind drops but the battles keep falling
the bird calls and the mountain becomes more mysterious
little sounds emphasizing silence little motions emphasizing stillness
this quality you is in this way you can
is in chinese sean which means the the original deep deep mysterious darkness out of which everything arises the depth
jaco burma would say england
the
ah in the book of genesis and darkness covered the face of the deep or the spirit of god moved upon the face of the waters those waters of chaos the primeval blackness
which is the same blackness as your head
you know how your head appears invisible to your eyes
that is ken
it is darker than darkness because it isn't it is blacker than black you see it is practically nothingness it's so mysterious so when you put these two characters together you get you can
and so you again
his first of all
stiffness
i was looking round one of the temples a few days ago
where i noticed it
you couldn't figure out how big it was
or it didn't have any limits
because always every walls they have a room seem to be a screen which lead to something else beyond
and at the back of every garden there seem to be a little gate that led to some other courtyard
and everything lead into something else and i said to the priest
i don't know whether i'm going to go exploring or not i'll just leave it alone i'm think that well here i left kyoto and i never did find out what pursue that little gate
and so what
now forever there will be magic behind them which i didn't define i didn't draw him
and so though this whole temple this was done that way
all sorts of suggestions of little avenues disappearing like a mountain path winding up among the trees where does it go
true if you follow it or you'll eventually go up out of kyoto here and get down to also and those who find yourself back in the suburbs
but there is the sense that disappearing mountain path like we've got going up here that it goes to the place
and everybody has in the back of their minds an image of the place that you want to go to or some they've not really an image though it's it's always like the indefinite there's the sudden feeling of there ought to be somewhere that thing i've always wanted
we get disappointed of course because as we get older we feel that perhaps that doesn't exist at all
that one just has to put up with the second best or with something half a loaf is better than no bread
but still i find that the
far eastern art is very very full
although hints about what is sometimes called horizon horizon is the magical island somewhere out in the pacific
which is the paradise island
and all these chinese paintings are wonderful floating pagodas and terraces with scholars sitting around drinking wine and so on are hints of the paradise well
and that somewhere then these little steps lead up to that thing
and you've seen these steps japan is full of them as you just go along on the train and look up the hills and that an ashes tory steps disappearing into the hills all of which suggests the feeding 'em out there who's that thing
so you as it work comes around full circle to sabi
ah the wonderful lonely place
at the end of the road
where they won't be any mother in law to bother you
any other that sort of dreadful social difficulty
but the solitude which befits visits
a bearded old gentleman
now of course you see all these things are are symbols
on one level they're very human and they reflect our bad childish and immature desires to be really alone to have that paradise thing
and realistic people will say well you ought not to bother yourself or fool yourself with such fantasies and nowadays i find that we feel very guilty
about
thinking of paradise
of horizon or whatever it is the enchanted garden
i think now i'm reality is what you read about in the newspapers you gotta face it
and everything is i'm cousin basically i know there's a hard boiled school of zoologists for example who insist that birds hate flying
you know everybody is always envied the boat and wanted to be able to glide along with wings you know and so that comes up somebody who is usually some wretched academicians who says now have we have discovered by measurements the birds low flying i'm us feel very satisfactory when you found that are out because you've smashed
an ideal
over the wings of a dove a faraway would i roam and the wilderness build me a nest and remain there forever at rest and quoting the sands
data
currently dumpsters hate this jar of flying
now it is just in the same way as
it's ridiculous
to try to be so inhuman has never to feel any regrets about the passing of time and of life
and so on is likewise in human
not to have the paradise fantasy
of the mysterious place round the corner just over the crest of the hill
just behind the island in the distance
see because that place is really
the big joke that's you that's why
you have found that at the end of the line when you get through the last story and up the last stairway you are liable to be confronted with the mirror
ha and so everybody is seeking seeking seeking seeking seeking for that thing that you've gotta have see well you got it
and but nobody's gonna believe this
but there it is the real the real thing that you are is the paradise lamb at you're looking for at the end of the line
and it's far far more a reliable
than any kind of an external scene which you could love and cling to hold onto
of cost the whole fascination of life is that that seemed perfectly incredible
ha ha
so
i think these terms
are the crucial ones
let me
repeat them briefly you got
firstly the uncover blog
and the unbleached silk these are the prototypes
then you have sabi
the mood of solitariness
robbie the flip
from
disillusion with everything to the sudden
recognition of how faithful the weeds are
oh the sparrows chopping in the eaves
suddenly take your mind away from important and dreadful business
ha
i want i
the regret
of the passing of life
which somehow makes that very passing
beautiful
for you
getting with it
and living with style
that is to say with rich poverty
elegant simplicity
you get
ah
the aesthetic equivalent
of
well let me put it this way there was a philosopher by the name of than the loo
who once said that the mystery of life is not a problem to be solved that a reality to be experienced
that's you can
and that mystery that deep deep ever so deep thing which is before all worlds is you
the unrecognized self
so let's have a brief intermission
you been listening to

the

the
the
the
the

the

eh
the

the

the

the

the

the

the
the

that

that
the

the

the
the
the

the

the
the

the

the
the
the
the
the
the
the

the
the
our
the

no

and

you can see i told you so
and if i should say
you know as safe as way
that anyway way for man to china
do you think he was not one
i love you
no
you never know
when
similar thoughts
you don't know where my pay shaky
you know
i had this one raid say
hey is that in a way for man's ha
do you think he was
not
hot
more than you'll ever know

the

you can
yeah i know that
the
the you have no one else
i've got a
they you say

the last
but i could be
president
he just had a great say
hey
what do you want your loved ones
i love
say
who than you'll ever know

i
hello
no

we
you may again so much
no way my a shit is
you know
bay
and i've never spent one read singing
the that in a way for a
do you think he wants
then
who you never know

yeah

do you read

you'll have a know

that's to go to state i love you more than you'll ever know that comes from rlb goal i want a country man that's a great ear cup