I remember once I was looking in the
open air and one of those glorious
little thistledown
things came and I picked it up like that
and brought it down and it looked as if
it was struggling to get away just as if
you caught an insect by one leg like a
daddy longlegs cause nothing of that
kind
it seemed to be struggling to get away
and I first I thought well it’s not
doing that that’s just the wind blowing
then I thought a game really only the
wind blowing surely it is the structure
of this thing which in cooperation with
the existence of width enables it to
move like a noun but using the wings
ever not its own it is more intelligent
being than an insect in a way because an
insect uses effort like a person who
Rosa boat uses effort but the man who
puts up a sail is using magic
he lets nature do it for him with the
intelligence to you the same thing
so injustice wave is the meaning of
alpha though is that kind of
intelligence which without you’re using
very much effort get everything to
cooperate with you you for example never
force other people to agree with you
that you give them the notion that the
idea you wanted them to have was their
own this is a really a a woman who
really wants a lover does not pursuit
because then most men feel that she’s a
gret and if she’s aggressive she
obviously is a woman who had difficulty
in finding lovers therefore there must
be some undesirably secret thing about
her but if she as it were makes a void
then and there slightly difficult to get
then people get excited they know she is
a highly prized object and so they
pursue same way when you want to teach a
baby to swim you clear thing you can do
is to put the baby in the water and then
move backwards in the water and create a
vacuum just cause the baby along it
helps it to learn the feel of the water
and how to swim is a principle
so also clever difficult to get enough
is one of the very best means of
acquiring immense publicity take the
case of TE Lawrence who published the
Seven Pillars of wisdom and the limited
edition and this was a became an
extraordinary celebrated book cost
hundreds of dollars a copy to find one
on market they waited and waited and
built the south and builders that built
with that finally establish the general
edition and it was a knockout because
the first the first one has been sort of
secrets and they’re difficult to find
and you have patience in the tea you can
always do this
so the whole art of the ruler see that
the daodejing is a book written for
several purposes you may take it as a
guide to mystical understanding being
with us you may take it as a
dissertation on the principles of nature
almost a naturalistic a handbook of
natural law we would say or you may also
take it as a political book a book of
wisdom for governance and the principle
which it advocates basically is the
virtue of governing by not ruling look
at it in this way supposing the
President of the United States well as
unknown to you by name as the local
sanitary inspector man looks out of the
drain and the sewage disposal and all
that kind of thing is not a glamorous
nigger see but for that very reason he
probably does his job more efficiently
than the president because the president
wastes in Norma’s amount of time
interviewing various groups from the
Elks and the girls gown and conferring
honors and always kind of thing the poor
man’s life must be a torment because
he’s so well known and therefore has
absolutely no time to give to the
government of country
I mean think of his mail and all the
people have to be employed sifting that
out and assessing it so that if he was
someone quite anonymous and that we
didn’t have to think about he would be a
very very good ruler in just the same
way for example you don’t have to attend
unless you’re sick to the government of
your own body it happens automatically
this is this expression to run of itself
and it goes on day after day after day
and there’s a better it is the less you
have to think about when you see well
you do not see your eyes if there is
something wrong with your eyes you start
seeing spots the spots are spots in your
eyes when you hear well you never hear
your ears but when they start singing
you know then you’re starting to hear
your ears and your ears are getting in
the way of their own hearing so on the
deepest level a person as a whole can
get in the way of his own existence by
becoming too aware of himself and then
he lacked this quality though now the
Daoists then proposed that there be
something to help people get back to
dark and to be able to be in the state
of death
so that they wouldn’t get in their own
way and this is connected with the idea
of being empty emptiness being somehow
latent was the secretive thing the the
highest kind of knowledge is not know
how but know how you know – HRW to be
able to do it know how without any
method to achieve this something is
practiced which is called fasting ah the
heart in Chinese is a word which doesn’t
mean heart in the physiological sense
see it’s part of the der character shin
it’s usually located about here and it
means hard mind equivalently translated
is mind and in all the Zen texts where
the word mind is used no mind Mushin it
is this character the psychic center
now the best kind of heart is absence of
heart in English the word heartland has
very bad connotation as does the word
minder a heartless person is an
inconsiderate unfeeling post a mindless
person is an idiot but a person who has
motion or no mind or no heart in Chinese
is a very high order of person it means
that his psychic center doesn’t get in
its own way it operates as if it wasn’t
there jeongja says that the highest form
of man uses his shin like a mirror it
grasps nothing it refuses nothing
it receives but does not keep and the
poem says when the geese fly over the
water and they are reflected in the
water but the geese do not intend to
count the reflection and the water has
no mind to retain that image
[Music]
so the whole thing is you see to operate
in the world as if you were absent now
this is built into a physiologically
fundamentally let me ask you what is the
color of your head from the standpoint
of your eyes your eyes don’t see on here
today you look all around you see
everything else put your head you don’t
see do you feel that your head is black
no hasn’t any color at all outside you
see your field of vision is oval to eye
on the street of true center vision
ellipse so there’s this whole field of
vision now experiment what is beyond the
field of vision what color is it where
you can’t see it isn’t black this is an
important point it’s no color at all
beyond there and in this way you can get
an idea of what is meant by that
character that I discussed Indrani chuan
which although it formerly has the
meaning of darkness although it formerly
has the needing of done deeper the
obscure it actually refers to this kind
of no color which is the color of your
head so far as your eyes are concerned
now so in this sense the invisibility of
one skin almost the not having of any
head at all is the secret of being alive
to be headless you might say to have no
head in just the sense I’m talking about
is our way of talking about the Chinese
expression motion no mind now as a
matter of fact if you want to see the
inside of your head all you have to do
is keep your eyes up because everything
that you’re experiencing in the example
visual field is the state of your brain
all these colors and shapes are the way
in which the brain nerves translate the
electrical and pulses in the external
world being the world outside it again
local skin
so they translate all what is going on
outside into impulses which are to out
shape and color the shape and color are
states of the nerves so what you see
when your eyes are open is how it feels
inside your head you think your head is
a blank but actually it’s being a blank
you don’t see your brain as an external
undulating corrugated structure you see
your brain as everything outside so in
this way that the emptiness that one’s
here
is the condition of seeing the
transparency of the eye lens is the
condition of seeing colors it has no
color itself there Kant said this
because my eye has no color it is able
to discern color this is in Germany in
the 13th century
this is fundamentals ours idea of being
absent as the condition of being present
being not there so for our Johnson says
when your belt is comfortable we don’t
leave it
when your shoes accountable it is as if
you weren’t wearing it likewise your
clothes see the more you are aware of
these things the less properly they are
made or the less properly they fit but
we raise an objection with it if I don’t
know I’m there I think to be missing it
we want to know that we know if we are
happy and we don’t know we’re happy we
might just as well not be happy to be
happy and to know that you’re happy is
really the overflowing of the cup of
life across the penalty for that is to
be miserable and to know the truth
some people are miserable without line
but you know my limericks there was a
young man and so it seems that I know
that I know what I would like to see is
the eye that those be when I know that I
know that I know now this is the great
human predicament the development of
self-consciousness the development of
the possibility of reflecting upon one’s
own knowledge and this is simultaneously
a blessing of the curse and taoism does
not escape this problem Meeny doesn’t it
doesn’t avoid this problem it deals with
it but it doesn’t deal with it obviously
so we get back to the fundamental verse
about the nature of death what is highly
virtuous into virtue that is not
conscious of itself as virtue the moment
is conscious of itself as that you see
it unveils
so in this way we love to see a child
dancing all by itself lost in the dam
and not performing to an audience we say
oh if only I could dance like that only
I could become like a child again
innocent but then soon we know and
parents noticed a beautiful child down
and they all approve of it and say that
this child danced for us
child begins to lose power and it puts
on air it knows this notice and we don’t
like that
so that’s affectation that’s showing off
that funny what we want you to do is to
dance as if you have no audience not
even yourself which of course puts the
child in a double bind because it says
the child we require you to do something
that will be acceptable only if you do
it as if it wasn’t required we do that
all the time to our children to each
other you must love me after all you
promised to do so when we got married in
– ah so
this is the difficulty but somehow a
very great artist in the maturity of his
life somehow is able at least to give
the impression that he does what he does
without playing to the gallery without
self-consciousness it seems perfectly
natural
so how does he get that there was a
taoist sage later that flow’d sir his
name was yet sir
we romanized that as hell i eh he and he
had a reputation to being able to ride
on the way so light janta said the
mantras it’s easy enough to stand still
difficulties walk without touching the
ground
because in the state of being in accord
with the dollar is some feeling weak
parallel to the weightlessness the
people feel when they get to our state
or when they go deep into the ocean so
this is a cost connected with the
sensation that you’re not carrying your
body around I described this morning the
sensation that an expert driver had when
he really is with it on a car that the
he’ll lift him up to drop him down the
other side that he and the road are all
along process and that’s equivalent to
the sense of waitress and so this is
connected to this is the inner meaning
of litsa riding on a win when suzuki was
asked what does it like to have Slattery
he said it’s just like ordinary everyday
experience because about two inches off
the ground and though we say in our own
song walking on air never appear only in
making the color the last tralala like
little berlin spring what is this
weightlessness
it means you’ve crossed partly that
you’re not moving around in constant
opposition to yourself
most people move in constant opposition
with no because they are trade but if
they don’t oppose themselves all the
time something awful will happen it’s so
easy to bend your arm no problem at all
but supposing you make a fight about and
you take these antagonistic muscles as
they’re called and fight them against
each other so that you’re spent around
like that see how ridiculous but if you
somehow felt that inventing your army
might make a mistake you know instead of
bending it you might hit yourself then
these two muscles get nervous and they
fight each other to be sure that
everything happens all right that’s
anxiety see so when the human beings
[Music]
developed the power to be aware of
himself to know that he knows in other
words when the cortex was formed over
the original brain he fell from grace
that was the fall of man
because when he helped have the
sensation of being in charge of being in
control of himself and you can only have
that sensation when you are aware of
what you’re doing
he got anxious am i aware enough of
myself have I taken enough factors into
consideration have I done all that
should be done and then he started
trembling this was the fall of man cross
this is what is meant the analysis when
the great Dow lost there came duty to
man and right conduct in other words
nobody talks about how you ought to
behave unless things have gone radically
wrong there wouldn’t be any conception
of faithful ministers of about the state
unless there were a lot of lousy
politicians around no one would talk
about female piety unless there were
wayward sons and daughters
so there is constantly in the tradition
of taoist the idea that all moral
preaching is confusion there’s a
marvelous case of this in the drums
o’clock where there’s an alleged
conversation between confucius and loud
side in which allows the ask confucius
to explain to him what is charity and
duty to one’s neighbor and confucius
gives me a little stuff no one being
giving up one self-interest and working
for other
and also says what stuff
so regard the universe he says
the stars come out invariably every
night the Sun rises and sets the birds
flock and migrate without exception all
flowers and trees grow upwards without
exception you by your talk of charity
and duty to one’s neighbor you’re just
introducing confusion into the Empire
your attempt to eliminate self is a
positive manifestation of selfishness
you are like a person beating a drum in
search of a fugitive the modern
equivalent of that would mean the police
are about to raid a bad nightclub and
coming with its arms along everybody in
the club gets out help all talk about
selfishness all talk about is success in
becoming virtuous or enlightened or
integrated or non neurotic or self
actualized let’s use all the terms that
are being used all this talk attest to
the fact that it hasn’t helped and will
in fact get in the way that’s happening
well to go back to Lister who succeeded
in riding the wind what happened letsa
found a very great master and went to
study with him and the master lived in a
small hut and Liat sir sat outside the
hut and master paid absolutely no
attention to it was the sort of the way
with Darwin awkward because why would
they want students there nothing to
teach so after a year of sitting outside
yes they went away and he just shut up
waiting so long then he sort of got
regretful about this thought he really
should make a try so he went back to the
master who said why this ceaseless
coming and going so he sat there and
tried to control his mind in such a way
that he would not think of the
differences between gain and loss in
other words try to live in such a way
that nothing is either an advantage or a
disadvantage
once upon a time there was a Chinese
farmer whose horse run away
and all the neighbors came around to
commiserate that evening so sorry to
hear your horses run away that’s too bad
and he said maybe the next day the horse
came back bringing seven wild horses
with it and everybody came around in the
evenings that always was that lucky
what a great turn of events we found on
a horse he said maybe the next day his
son tried to break one of these horses
and ride it to the throne and broke his
leg and they all said oh dear that’s too
bad and he said maybe the following day
the conscription officers came round to
recruit to force people into the army
and they rejected the son because he had
a broken leg and all the people came
around with it isn’t that great and he
said maybe see that is the attitude of
not thinking of things in terms with
gained or lost advantage or disadvantage
because you don’t really know the fact
that you might get a letter from a
solicitor I mean from a young a law
office tomorrow saying that some distant
relative of yours left you a million
dollars it might be something you would
feel very very happy about but the
disastrous that it could lead to or
unbelievable Internal Revenue to mention
only one possible so I you never really
know whether something is fortune on
this watch
we only know the momentary changes and
it also our sense of hope about things a
taoist is wise enough to eventually see
to understand that there isn’t any sixth
good or bad and so his point of view is
what is called not choosing well anyway
the other attempted to keep his mind in
a state of not choosing this is a very
difficult thing to do to overcome one’s
habits of feeling and thinking in this
respect and after he had practiced this
for a year the master looked at him you
know sort of recognized he was there
after another years practice he invited
him to come and sit inside his heart and
then bow however something changed and
Lisa didn’t try anymore to control his
mind what he did was he what it is
displayed I left my ears here whatever
they wanted to hear I let my eyes see
whatever they wanted to see I let my
feet move wherever they wanted to go I
let my mind think of what everyone
thinks
and then he said it was a very strange
sensation because all my bodily
existence seemed to melt and become
comes back and have no weight and I
didn’t know was that I was walking on
the width of a little walk beyond me now
that’s the fasting of the heart all
right
in the ordinary where you see you say
will that make quite an impression on as
if you were a slate or a blackboard upon
which life makes an impression of the
chalk does long as later the blackboard
so we say well here are these events and
I’m the observer of all the events and I
remember them and they make an
impression on me but in the psychology
of Darwin there is no difference between
you as observer and whatever it is that
you observe the only thing that means
you
is the observation of life from a
certain point of view I said a little
while ago you think your heads are empty
and black and the actual inside of your
head itself in terms with everything you
see on the outside we make an opposition
see between the thicker thought the
experiencer and the experience the
knower and the known because we think
about knowledge in terms of certain
metaphors the metaphor of the stylus on
the writing sheet the reflection on
terror all those sort of images come
into our idea knowledge
but in the taoist theory of knowledge in
writing
there isn’t a noah facing the gnome it
would be more like saying that if there
is any noah at all it contains them your
mind if you have one is not in your head
your head is in your mind because your
mind understood from the standpoint of
vision is speed the Chinese use this
word
which means
sky space sometimes emptiness and there
is a saying that form or you know shaken
color was one word in Chinese that means
really both shape and color
and this and this are said to be
identical in space or internets is
precisely shape color and shape color is
precisely and this is actually a
Buddhist from the tree tires
so this
all that we call space contains the
myriads of shapes and colors and bodies
and weights in fact I don’t reflect them
as a mirror but it is the absence which
guarantees their presence and if their
presence which guaranteed without so
does this mutual relationship began the
mutual arising is brain between
whiteness and form between existence and
non-existence being and non-being these
are never felt as alternatives or things
that are in some kind of contest so then
when it is said that there is not
anything behind Falls not any experience
who has experience this is a way of
saying that experiencing knowing is not
an encounter between strangers Western
thought concentrate very much on
knowledge as an encounter and it is us
that we talk about facing facts facing
reality as if somehow or other the
knower and the known came from two
completely different worlds and met each
other like that whereas actually the
phenomenon of knowledge is almost the
precise opposite of that
instead of being a collision between the
two wandering bodies in space knowledge
is much more like the expansion of the
flower from the stem on the pod where
the opposite points of the flower are
the knower
they are the term of something which as
it were lies the clean let me repeat we
tend in all our medicines and common
speech to think of life as an encounter
between the knowing human being the
knowing mind and the world they think of
it not as an encounter but as an
expression of an impression an
expression of the process that has
polarized itself coming out of a Center
and expressed itself in terms of others
but of course this is the basis of the
whole Jungian principle of you know this
Charlie holding and where you’ve got to
interlock what are they fishes comment
fascinating Evelyn
call it a mom had yes but there it is
this is a helix essentially descriptive
now this is the formation of spiral
nebulae and that’s the position of
sexual intercourse I hear this is my eye
and you hear with your eye I’m trying to
get to the middle of you you’re trying
to get the middle of me and neither one
of us exists without the other
this is yang Yang the white Andy in the
dark
yang the word young originally means or
is associated with the south side of a
mountain which is sunny in the north
side which is done yang is the north
bank of a river which gets without me in
a South Bank were little little shade
now you see you don’t get a mountain
with only one side the mountain if it’s
the mountain the tall goes up and down
it’s like the weight you don’t get a
wave which has depressed with no truck
or a truck with no prayers you can’t hop
away so yeah and you are quite different
from each other but just because they
are different there I did this is the
important idea of the identical digital
the same goes in both towers and
Buddhism difference in identity identity
is difference Chinese word for is is not
quite the same of our word this word
which is usually use house rather than
meaning of um that that so they say
would say difference that identity
identity that difference
and so this doesn’t mean quite is
exactly the same as it means rather is
in relation to or goes with necessarily
involves difference necessarily involves
identity identity necessarily involves
difference so we are in the end there is
no Yang without you know Yin without
yang when I was first studying these
things I was terribly bothered by how on
earth I would don’t see there’s multiple
differentiating world what one person
what would it be like to see that all
things are why the sages keep saying all
things are one and they all looked to me
so different as here soul is tici tici
tici tici going on around one and it is
doing it in different ways all these
people came on in different ways and
they had all their houses and all their
cars and all that this and that the
whole world looked full of the most bony
prickly differences and I thought well
what’s what happen is that supposed to
be a kind of as if in your eyesight got
blurred and all these things son went
yeah and flow together what is it so
what is this experience of Nirvana of
liberation etc supposed to be because so
many of these especially Hindu sages
write about as if Li was just this kind
of dissolution of everything is that it
all become like slug with a small salt
on it
well itit took me a long time and
suddenly one day I realized that the
difference that I saw between things was
the same thing as they get it because
differences borders lines surfaces
boundaries don’t really divide things
from each other at all
they join them together because all
boundaries are held in common like let’s
think about the territory which has all
been divided up into property in your
property my property eccentric center
there are the fences but we hold it if I
live next to you your fence is my fence
we hold the boundary in common we may
make us silly arrangement sister who is
responsible for the maintenance of this
fence but nevertheless we hold our
boundaries in common and we wouldn’t
know what my plot of land was or where
it was unless we knew the definition of
your plot of land your plot of land that
is adjoining so boundaries are held in
common and I could see then that if that
my sense of being me was exactly the
same thing as my sensation of being one
with the whole cosmos I didn’t need to
get some other weird a sort of different
odd kind of experience
to feel in total connection with
everything once you get the clue you see
that the sense of unity is inseparable
from the sense of difference
you wouldn’t know yourself or what you
meant by self and less at the same time
you have the feeling of something other
now it’s that the secret is that other
eventually turns out to be you and me
that’s the element of surprise in life
when suddenly you find the thing most
alien we say now what is most alien to
us go out at night and look at the Stars
and realize that they are millions and
millions of billions of miles away fast
conflagrations out in space and you can
lie back and look at that say well
surely I hardly matter I’m just a tiny
tiny little peekaboo on this weird spot
of dust of Earth and all that going on
out there
billions of years before I was born
billions of years after I will die
nothing seems strange any cloud more
different dropping there comes a point
if you watch long enough then you will
say why that’s mean it’s the other
that is the condition of your being
yourself as the back is the condition of
being the front and when you know that
you know you never die
open air and one of those glorious
little thistledown
things came and I picked it up like that
and brought it down and it looked as if
it was struggling to get away just as if
you caught an insect by one leg like a
daddy longlegs cause nothing of that
kind
it seemed to be struggling to get away
and I first I thought well it’s not
doing that that’s just the wind blowing
then I thought a game really only the
wind blowing surely it is the structure
of this thing which in cooperation with
the existence of width enables it to
move like a noun but using the wings
ever not its own it is more intelligent
being than an insect in a way because an
insect uses effort like a person who
Rosa boat uses effort but the man who
puts up a sail is using magic
he lets nature do it for him with the
intelligence to you the same thing
so injustice wave is the meaning of
alpha though is that kind of
intelligence which without you’re using
very much effort get everything to
cooperate with you you for example never
force other people to agree with you
that you give them the notion that the
idea you wanted them to have was their
own this is a really a a woman who
really wants a lover does not pursuit
because then most men feel that she’s a
gret and if she’s aggressive she
obviously is a woman who had difficulty
in finding lovers therefore there must
be some undesirably secret thing about
her but if she as it were makes a void
then and there slightly difficult to get
then people get excited they know she is
a highly prized object and so they
pursue same way when you want to teach a
baby to swim you clear thing you can do
is to put the baby in the water and then
move backwards in the water and create a
vacuum just cause the baby along it
helps it to learn the feel of the water
and how to swim is a principle
so also clever difficult to get enough
is one of the very best means of
acquiring immense publicity take the
case of TE Lawrence who published the
Seven Pillars of wisdom and the limited
edition and this was a became an
extraordinary celebrated book cost
hundreds of dollars a copy to find one
on market they waited and waited and
built the south and builders that built
with that finally establish the general
edition and it was a knockout because
the first the first one has been sort of
secrets and they’re difficult to find
and you have patience in the tea you can
always do this
so the whole art of the ruler see that
the daodejing is a book written for
several purposes you may take it as a
guide to mystical understanding being
with us you may take it as a
dissertation on the principles of nature
almost a naturalistic a handbook of
natural law we would say or you may also
take it as a political book a book of
wisdom for governance and the principle
which it advocates basically is the
virtue of governing by not ruling look
at it in this way supposing the
President of the United States well as
unknown to you by name as the local
sanitary inspector man looks out of the
drain and the sewage disposal and all
that kind of thing is not a glamorous
nigger see but for that very reason he
probably does his job more efficiently
than the president because the president
wastes in Norma’s amount of time
interviewing various groups from the
Elks and the girls gown and conferring
honors and always kind of thing the poor
man’s life must be a torment because
he’s so well known and therefore has
absolutely no time to give to the
government of country
I mean think of his mail and all the
people have to be employed sifting that
out and assessing it so that if he was
someone quite anonymous and that we
didn’t have to think about he would be a
very very good ruler in just the same
way for example you don’t have to attend
unless you’re sick to the government of
your own body it happens automatically
this is this expression to run of itself
and it goes on day after day after day
and there’s a better it is the less you
have to think about when you see well
you do not see your eyes if there is
something wrong with your eyes you start
seeing spots the spots are spots in your
eyes when you hear well you never hear
your ears but when they start singing
you know then you’re starting to hear
your ears and your ears are getting in
the way of their own hearing so on the
deepest level a person as a whole can
get in the way of his own existence by
becoming too aware of himself and then
he lacked this quality though now the
Daoists then proposed that there be
something to help people get back to
dark and to be able to be in the state
of death
so that they wouldn’t get in their own
way and this is connected with the idea
of being empty emptiness being somehow
latent was the secretive thing the the
highest kind of knowledge is not know
how but know how you know – HRW to be
able to do it know how without any
method to achieve this something is
practiced which is called fasting ah the
heart in Chinese is a word which doesn’t
mean heart in the physiological sense
see it’s part of the der character shin
it’s usually located about here and it
means hard mind equivalently translated
is mind and in all the Zen texts where
the word mind is used no mind Mushin it
is this character the psychic center
now the best kind of heart is absence of
heart in English the word heartland has
very bad connotation as does the word
minder a heartless person is an
inconsiderate unfeeling post a mindless
person is an idiot but a person who has
motion or no mind or no heart in Chinese
is a very high order of person it means
that his psychic center doesn’t get in
its own way it operates as if it wasn’t
there jeongja says that the highest form
of man uses his shin like a mirror it
grasps nothing it refuses nothing
it receives but does not keep and the
poem says when the geese fly over the
water and they are reflected in the
water but the geese do not intend to
count the reflection and the water has
no mind to retain that image
[Music]
so the whole thing is you see to operate
in the world as if you were absent now
this is built into a physiologically
fundamentally let me ask you what is the
color of your head from the standpoint
of your eyes your eyes don’t see on here
today you look all around you see
everything else put your head you don’t
see do you feel that your head is black
no hasn’t any color at all outside you
see your field of vision is oval to eye
on the street of true center vision
ellipse so there’s this whole field of
vision now experiment what is beyond the
field of vision what color is it where
you can’t see it isn’t black this is an
important point it’s no color at all
beyond there and in this way you can get
an idea of what is meant by that
character that I discussed Indrani chuan
which although it formerly has the
meaning of darkness although it formerly
has the needing of done deeper the
obscure it actually refers to this kind
of no color which is the color of your
head so far as your eyes are concerned
now so in this sense the invisibility of
one skin almost the not having of any
head at all is the secret of being alive
to be headless you might say to have no
head in just the sense I’m talking about
is our way of talking about the Chinese
expression motion no mind now as a
matter of fact if you want to see the
inside of your head all you have to do
is keep your eyes up because everything
that you’re experiencing in the example
visual field is the state of your brain
all these colors and shapes are the way
in which the brain nerves translate the
electrical and pulses in the external
world being the world outside it again
local skin
so they translate all what is going on
outside into impulses which are to out
shape and color the shape and color are
states of the nerves so what you see
when your eyes are open is how it feels
inside your head you think your head is
a blank but actually it’s being a blank
you don’t see your brain as an external
undulating corrugated structure you see
your brain as everything outside so in
this way that the emptiness that one’s
here
is the condition of seeing the
transparency of the eye lens is the
condition of seeing colors it has no
color itself there Kant said this
because my eye has no color it is able
to discern color this is in Germany in
the 13th century
this is fundamentals ours idea of being
absent as the condition of being present
being not there so for our Johnson says
when your belt is comfortable we don’t
leave it
when your shoes accountable it is as if
you weren’t wearing it likewise your
clothes see the more you are aware of
these things the less properly they are
made or the less properly they fit but
we raise an objection with it if I don’t
know I’m there I think to be missing it
we want to know that we know if we are
happy and we don’t know we’re happy we
might just as well not be happy to be
happy and to know that you’re happy is
really the overflowing of the cup of
life across the penalty for that is to
be miserable and to know the truth
some people are miserable without line
but you know my limericks there was a
young man and so it seems that I know
that I know what I would like to see is
the eye that those be when I know that I
know that I know now this is the great
human predicament the development of
self-consciousness the development of
the possibility of reflecting upon one’s
own knowledge and this is simultaneously
a blessing of the curse and taoism does
not escape this problem Meeny doesn’t it
doesn’t avoid this problem it deals with
it but it doesn’t deal with it obviously
so we get back to the fundamental verse
about the nature of death what is highly
virtuous into virtue that is not
conscious of itself as virtue the moment
is conscious of itself as that you see
it unveils
so in this way we love to see a child
dancing all by itself lost in the dam
and not performing to an audience we say
oh if only I could dance like that only
I could become like a child again
innocent but then soon we know and
parents noticed a beautiful child down
and they all approve of it and say that
this child danced for us
child begins to lose power and it puts
on air it knows this notice and we don’t
like that
so that’s affectation that’s showing off
that funny what we want you to do is to
dance as if you have no audience not
even yourself which of course puts the
child in a double bind because it says
the child we require you to do something
that will be acceptable only if you do
it as if it wasn’t required we do that
all the time to our children to each
other you must love me after all you
promised to do so when we got married in
– ah so
this is the difficulty but somehow a
very great artist in the maturity of his
life somehow is able at least to give
the impression that he does what he does
without playing to the gallery without
self-consciousness it seems perfectly
natural
so how does he get that there was a
taoist sage later that flow’d sir his
name was yet sir
we romanized that as hell i eh he and he
had a reputation to being able to ride
on the way so light janta said the
mantras it’s easy enough to stand still
difficulties walk without touching the
ground
because in the state of being in accord
with the dollar is some feeling weak
parallel to the weightlessness the
people feel when they get to our state
or when they go deep into the ocean so
this is a cost connected with the
sensation that you’re not carrying your
body around I described this morning the
sensation that an expert driver had when
he really is with it on a car that the
he’ll lift him up to drop him down the
other side that he and the road are all
along process and that’s equivalent to
the sense of waitress and so this is
connected to this is the inner meaning
of litsa riding on a win when suzuki was
asked what does it like to have Slattery
he said it’s just like ordinary everyday
experience because about two inches off
the ground and though we say in our own
song walking on air never appear only in
making the color the last tralala like
little berlin spring what is this
weightlessness
it means you’ve crossed partly that
you’re not moving around in constant
opposition to yourself
most people move in constant opposition
with no because they are trade but if
they don’t oppose themselves all the
time something awful will happen it’s so
easy to bend your arm no problem at all
but supposing you make a fight about and
you take these antagonistic muscles as
they’re called and fight them against
each other so that you’re spent around
like that see how ridiculous but if you
somehow felt that inventing your army
might make a mistake you know instead of
bending it you might hit yourself then
these two muscles get nervous and they
fight each other to be sure that
everything happens all right that’s
anxiety see so when the human beings
[Music]
developed the power to be aware of
himself to know that he knows in other
words when the cortex was formed over
the original brain he fell from grace
that was the fall of man
because when he helped have the
sensation of being in charge of being in
control of himself and you can only have
that sensation when you are aware of
what you’re doing
he got anxious am i aware enough of
myself have I taken enough factors into
consideration have I done all that
should be done and then he started
trembling this was the fall of man cross
this is what is meant the analysis when
the great Dow lost there came duty to
man and right conduct in other words
nobody talks about how you ought to
behave unless things have gone radically
wrong there wouldn’t be any conception
of faithful ministers of about the state
unless there were a lot of lousy
politicians around no one would talk
about female piety unless there were
wayward sons and daughters
so there is constantly in the tradition
of taoist the idea that all moral
preaching is confusion there’s a
marvelous case of this in the drums
o’clock where there’s an alleged
conversation between confucius and loud
side in which allows the ask confucius
to explain to him what is charity and
duty to one’s neighbor and confucius
gives me a little stuff no one being
giving up one self-interest and working
for other
and also says what stuff
so regard the universe he says
the stars come out invariably every
night the Sun rises and sets the birds
flock and migrate without exception all
flowers and trees grow upwards without
exception you by your talk of charity
and duty to one’s neighbor you’re just
introducing confusion into the Empire
your attempt to eliminate self is a
positive manifestation of selfishness
you are like a person beating a drum in
search of a fugitive the modern
equivalent of that would mean the police
are about to raid a bad nightclub and
coming with its arms along everybody in
the club gets out help all talk about
selfishness all talk about is success in
becoming virtuous or enlightened or
integrated or non neurotic or self
actualized let’s use all the terms that
are being used all this talk attest to
the fact that it hasn’t helped and will
in fact get in the way that’s happening
well to go back to Lister who succeeded
in riding the wind what happened letsa
found a very great master and went to
study with him and the master lived in a
small hut and Liat sir sat outside the
hut and master paid absolutely no
attention to it was the sort of the way
with Darwin awkward because why would
they want students there nothing to
teach so after a year of sitting outside
yes they went away and he just shut up
waiting so long then he sort of got
regretful about this thought he really
should make a try so he went back to the
master who said why this ceaseless
coming and going so he sat there and
tried to control his mind in such a way
that he would not think of the
differences between gain and loss in
other words try to live in such a way
that nothing is either an advantage or a
disadvantage
once upon a time there was a Chinese
farmer whose horse run away
and all the neighbors came around to
commiserate that evening so sorry to
hear your horses run away that’s too bad
and he said maybe the next day the horse
came back bringing seven wild horses
with it and everybody came around in the
evenings that always was that lucky
what a great turn of events we found on
a horse he said maybe the next day his
son tried to break one of these horses
and ride it to the throne and broke his
leg and they all said oh dear that’s too
bad and he said maybe the following day
the conscription officers came round to
recruit to force people into the army
and they rejected the son because he had
a broken leg and all the people came
around with it isn’t that great and he
said maybe see that is the attitude of
not thinking of things in terms with
gained or lost advantage or disadvantage
because you don’t really know the fact
that you might get a letter from a
solicitor I mean from a young a law
office tomorrow saying that some distant
relative of yours left you a million
dollars it might be something you would
feel very very happy about but the
disastrous that it could lead to or
unbelievable Internal Revenue to mention
only one possible so I you never really
know whether something is fortune on
this watch
we only know the momentary changes and
it also our sense of hope about things a
taoist is wise enough to eventually see
to understand that there isn’t any sixth
good or bad and so his point of view is
what is called not choosing well anyway
the other attempted to keep his mind in
a state of not choosing this is a very
difficult thing to do to overcome one’s
habits of feeling and thinking in this
respect and after he had practiced this
for a year the master looked at him you
know sort of recognized he was there
after another years practice he invited
him to come and sit inside his heart and
then bow however something changed and
Lisa didn’t try anymore to control his
mind what he did was he what it is
displayed I left my ears here whatever
they wanted to hear I let my eyes see
whatever they wanted to see I let my
feet move wherever they wanted to go I
let my mind think of what everyone
thinks
and then he said it was a very strange
sensation because all my bodily
existence seemed to melt and become
comes back and have no weight and I
didn’t know was that I was walking on
the width of a little walk beyond me now
that’s the fasting of the heart all
right
in the ordinary where you see you say
will that make quite an impression on as
if you were a slate or a blackboard upon
which life makes an impression of the
chalk does long as later the blackboard
so we say well here are these events and
I’m the observer of all the events and I
remember them and they make an
impression on me but in the psychology
of Darwin there is no difference between
you as observer and whatever it is that
you observe the only thing that means
you
is the observation of life from a
certain point of view I said a little
while ago you think your heads are empty
and black and the actual inside of your
head itself in terms with everything you
see on the outside we make an opposition
see between the thicker thought the
experiencer and the experience the
knower and the known because we think
about knowledge in terms of certain
metaphors the metaphor of the stylus on
the writing sheet the reflection on
terror all those sort of images come
into our idea knowledge
but in the taoist theory of knowledge in
writing
there isn’t a noah facing the gnome it
would be more like saying that if there
is any noah at all it contains them your
mind if you have one is not in your head
your head is in your mind because your
mind understood from the standpoint of
vision is speed the Chinese use this
word
which means
sky space sometimes emptiness and there
is a saying that form or you know shaken
color was one word in Chinese that means
really both shape and color
and this and this are said to be
identical in space or internets is
precisely shape color and shape color is
precisely and this is actually a
Buddhist from the tree tires
so this
all that we call space contains the
myriads of shapes and colors and bodies
and weights in fact I don’t reflect them
as a mirror but it is the absence which
guarantees their presence and if their
presence which guaranteed without so
does this mutual relationship began the
mutual arising is brain between
whiteness and form between existence and
non-existence being and non-being these
are never felt as alternatives or things
that are in some kind of contest so then
when it is said that there is not
anything behind Falls not any experience
who has experience this is a way of
saying that experiencing knowing is not
an encounter between strangers Western
thought concentrate very much on
knowledge as an encounter and it is us
that we talk about facing facts facing
reality as if somehow or other the
knower and the known came from two
completely different worlds and met each
other like that whereas actually the
phenomenon of knowledge is almost the
precise opposite of that
instead of being a collision between the
two wandering bodies in space knowledge
is much more like the expansion of the
flower from the stem on the pod where
the opposite points of the flower are
the knower
they are the term of something which as
it were lies the clean let me repeat we
tend in all our medicines and common
speech to think of life as an encounter
between the knowing human being the
knowing mind and the world they think of
it not as an encounter but as an
expression of an impression an
expression of the process that has
polarized itself coming out of a Center
and expressed itself in terms of others
but of course this is the basis of the
whole Jungian principle of you know this
Charlie holding and where you’ve got to
interlock what are they fishes comment
fascinating Evelyn
call it a mom had yes but there it is
this is a helix essentially descriptive
now this is the formation of spiral
nebulae and that’s the position of
sexual intercourse I hear this is my eye
and you hear with your eye I’m trying to
get to the middle of you you’re trying
to get the middle of me and neither one
of us exists without the other
this is yang Yang the white Andy in the
dark
yang the word young originally means or
is associated with the south side of a
mountain which is sunny in the north
side which is done yang is the north
bank of a river which gets without me in
a South Bank were little little shade
now you see you don’t get a mountain
with only one side the mountain if it’s
the mountain the tall goes up and down
it’s like the weight you don’t get a
wave which has depressed with no truck
or a truck with no prayers you can’t hop
away so yeah and you are quite different
from each other but just because they
are different there I did this is the
important idea of the identical digital
the same goes in both towers and
Buddhism difference in identity identity
is difference Chinese word for is is not
quite the same of our word this word
which is usually use house rather than
meaning of um that that so they say
would say difference that identity
identity that difference
and so this doesn’t mean quite is
exactly the same as it means rather is
in relation to or goes with necessarily
involves difference necessarily involves
identity identity necessarily involves
difference so we are in the end there is
no Yang without you know Yin without
yang when I was first studying these
things I was terribly bothered by how on
earth I would don’t see there’s multiple
differentiating world what one person
what would it be like to see that all
things are why the sages keep saying all
things are one and they all looked to me
so different as here soul is tici tici
tici tici going on around one and it is
doing it in different ways all these
people came on in different ways and
they had all their houses and all their
cars and all that this and that the
whole world looked full of the most bony
prickly differences and I thought well
what’s what happen is that supposed to
be a kind of as if in your eyesight got
blurred and all these things son went
yeah and flow together what is it so
what is this experience of Nirvana of
liberation etc supposed to be because so
many of these especially Hindu sages
write about as if Li was just this kind
of dissolution of everything is that it
all become like slug with a small salt
on it
well itit took me a long time and
suddenly one day I realized that the
difference that I saw between things was
the same thing as they get it because
differences borders lines surfaces
boundaries don’t really divide things
from each other at all
they join them together because all
boundaries are held in common like let’s
think about the territory which has all
been divided up into property in your
property my property eccentric center
there are the fences but we hold it if I
live next to you your fence is my fence
we hold the boundary in common we may
make us silly arrangement sister who is
responsible for the maintenance of this
fence but nevertheless we hold our
boundaries in common and we wouldn’t
know what my plot of land was or where
it was unless we knew the definition of
your plot of land your plot of land that
is adjoining so boundaries are held in
common and I could see then that if that
my sense of being me was exactly the
same thing as my sensation of being one
with the whole cosmos I didn’t need to
get some other weird a sort of different
odd kind of experience
to feel in total connection with
everything once you get the clue you see
that the sense of unity is inseparable
from the sense of difference
you wouldn’t know yourself or what you
meant by self and less at the same time
you have the feeling of something other
now it’s that the secret is that other
eventually turns out to be you and me
that’s the element of surprise in life
when suddenly you find the thing most
alien we say now what is most alien to
us go out at night and look at the Stars
and realize that they are millions and
millions of billions of miles away fast
conflagrations out in space and you can
lie back and look at that say well
surely I hardly matter I’m just a tiny
tiny little peekaboo on this weird spot
of dust of Earth and all that going on
out there
billions of years before I was born
billions of years after I will die
nothing seems strange any cloud more
different dropping there comes a point
if you watch long enough then you will
say why that’s mean it’s the other
that is the condition of your being
yourself as the back is the condition of
being the front and when you know that
you know you never die
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