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Good afternoon. I'm back.
I realized, after I left this morning,
that I have become very fond of this metaphor of text on white paper,
because I think that it evokes a sense of what I'm talking about
when I tell you that you're always aware of yourself,
but you almost never notice yourself.
And if you do notice yourself you usually kind of recoil from it,
because it's so uninteresting and not part of the story.
But I see, too, that that metaphor breaks down pretty quickly,
as all metaphors do. All of them.
And most of what we deal with, when we speak of these matters at all,
in any venue, in any domain, is metaphorical,
because we're speaking about things
that really have no physical component to them,
and have no actual substance to them.
So we speak of them metaphorically.
And it's in the metaphors, of course, that we get lost;
and all metaphors break down.
And that one breaks down because, of course, in that metaphor,
it would be the ink itself that would be turning itself
in the direction of the white paper in order to see itself.
Which is absurd but, in a sense, it actually is not so wrong.
It is, in fact, this personal character,
this apparatus of personality,
this persona, this mask, this face (I like 'face'),
that in which the movement occurs at all,
in which any movement occurs.
The movement of grasping, the movement of clinging,
the movement of resistance, the movement of denial,
the movement of running from fear, the movement of sinking into fear,
the movement of indifference, the movement of all of that,
all takes place within this
that is essentially a hypothetical apparatus of personality and persona,
including the beam of attention, which is the tool that we use.
And including the will to do so.
It's all part of this will-o'- the-wisp,
this persona, this apparatus of personality,
this construct that comes into being to protect us from life.
And, of course, it is the very absurdity of all of that
that makes it so difficult to talk about.
We're talking about what is essentially nothing at all,
except a bundle of thought, and attitudes, and relationships,
none of which is anything at all, all just mind stuff, thought stuff.
And we're talking about using it to do something to rid ourselves of it,
or at least its current iteration, its current shape and contour.
And we often get lost in our confusion around that absurdity,
that literal philosophical absurdity,
that I am something that can use this nothing
in order to accomplish the reformation and redemption
of that very same nothing
that seems to be causing all the trouble in the first place.
So we start to reflect on these matters,
and we have been reflecting on these matters for many thousands of years,
and we get lost in them, and we end up in the funhouse of non-dual,
nobody happening, nobody here, nothing going on,
nothing being done, nothing to have it done to,
no thought, no feeling, no emotion, no sensation, no anything.
And, of course, that confuses us even more,
because here we are, these creatures, caught in a web of thought,
and action, and reaction, and consequence,
and effect, and so forth.
But the reason for that is actually pretty simple.
It's because the tool that we use to understand these things
is not capable of doing the job of understanding these things.
The tool that we use is basically language,
that's our basic tool to understand things.
Language. Words. Concepts. Metaphors. Tropes.
Figures of speech. Similes. On and on.
And this tool, this language business,
although it is really a stunning thing
that we can talk to each other...
Other creatures can't do that.
I mean, they can communicate somewhat,
but the level of fine detail that is possible for us
with these grunting sounds and so forth
is really quite remarkable, quite surprising.
And because it is so remarkable,
and because it is so much a part of our sense of what we are,
our ability to talk to ourselves...
And some of that talking to ourselves
is even kind of pre-lingual, rather than language...
But our ability to talk to ourselves, our ability to talk to each other,
our ability to identify sensations to be this or that
depending upon context,
all that is part of the capacity of language, of speech.
It's all speech, every bit of it.
And because it is such a delightful power that we have,
which is really kind of unique, unique in this world anyway,
because of the wonder of that power and our love affair with it…
I mean, there's nothing I like better than to hear myself talk...
I guess I found the right job, huh?
But because of all of that,
we put far too much faith in it, far too much faith in it.
It is not, as we are accustomed to seeing it,
some fine instrument of subtle
and sophisticated and sweet understanding,
and the ability to dissect, and open up things,
and examine them, and name them, and all of that.
It's more like a blunt instrument in its relationship
to the actuality of our nature and reality itself.
It's really just like a club.
And we could smash at things and kind of break them apart a little bit,
and think that we therefore understand them,
but there is no understanding of reality.
There's understanding of understanding,
there's understanding of the light show
that is the parade of phenomena that come and go within us,
but there is no understanding of reality.
There's no way in the world to bring reality under the leash of language.
It's just not possible. It's just not possible.
And even though this is a kind of a…
Everybody knows that's true.
If you've ever been in the spiritual circle,
everybody knows that's the case.
"Yes, yes, that's right, but we've got to talk about it,
we've got to understand it, we've got to see what's what."
It is understanding that will free us, for the most part,
within the realm of spiritual aspiration.
It is clarity of vision that will free us,
and the only way that we can be clear about what we're looking at
is to describe it, and name it, and define it,
and notice its relationship with other things,
and with itself.
And that's okay with these gross lives of
loud and blunt characteristics about it.
These personalities are not real sophisticated, they're really not.
We love them, god knows we love them, but they're not very sophisticated,
and it doesn't take a great deal of sophistication,
or the ability to see nuance to understand personality.
It's just this conglomeration of things.
I mean, it's crazy, and you can't understand it
in the sense of making sense of it,
but you can see its parts,
and you can see how it acts and what it reacts to,
and what the basis of that reaction is, and all of those things.
All the things about our lives seem to be within our grasp to understand,
to get some understanding of it...
Why I relate to you in the way I relate to you;
why I relate to you in the way I relate to you.
But our relationship to reality is not so simple.
Or, actually, it is even more simple.
It's not so complicated. It is self-evident.
It speaks for itself, and it is quite clear.
But this tool that we use,
the capacity to be able to see, and name,
and distinguish, and discern between one thing and the other,
to notice relationships, and reactions, and all of that,
is powerless to actually speak of these matters
that we speak of in these meetings.
It is powerless, actually, to say anything at all directly about
what it is that I mean when I say 'look at yourself.'
It is powerless to say anything directly about the way
in which this movement is accomplished.
It's powerless to say anything at all that's really true
about the beam of attention, or about who moves it,
or how it moves, or what it means, or what it does.
We can evoke the sense of having this beam of attention
by calling your attention to the fact
that you can call your attention to a fact.
But to actually speak of it, to actually describe what it does,
to actually make it fit in to some overall gestalt that is our lives,
and the relationships within them,
and the whole relationship with reality,
we're powerless to do that. We really are.
But that doesn't stop us from trying.
And it's in the trying that the problems arise.
It's in the blind faith in our capacity to understand, and name,
and define things that the problems arise
that lead us into a spiritual dead-end.
Because then, we have to start saying really weird things,
like "I am not here," you know?
Or, "nobody does anything."
Well, that doesn't make any sense.
I mean, I can see exactly what is being spoken of;
I can see it very clearly when it is said
that there's nobody doing anything, and nothing being done.
I can see very clearly what the point is of that,
and what they're trying to point to,
but I can see also that even my seeing of that
is a clumsy approximation
of what it is that's actually taking place.
So, my metaphors break down.
Go figure.
They are in fact metaphors that are not even connected
to any real activity that anyone can tease out and understand.
But what I've discovered is that that's beside the point.
It really is beside the point.
Understanding what happens is irrelevant.
The fact is that, in our everyday lives,
in our everyday getting up in the morning, having breakfast,
going to work for a living, paying bills, having dinner,
mowing the lawn, paying somebody to mow the lawn,
in our everyday, day to day lives,
we never, ever question any of those things.
There's no…
When I go to write a check to pay a bill,
I don't think, "Who's doing this?"
"Why, no one's doing this."
"What's being done? Why, nothing is being done."
So, we do the best we can.
But we should be very aware of the limitations
of what we can do when we speak about these things,
especially when we speak about something
that is so not anything as looking at yourself.
We should be really careful about believing
that my metaphors, your metaphors,
my descriptions, your descriptions,
anything at all apart from the actual event that occurs
to which I have assigned the name 'looking at yourself.'
You should be very careful of thinking anything about it at all,
or trying to do anything based on what you think about it at all.
This practice has nothing to do with understanding. Nothing.
Understanding is entirely irrelevant,
entirely beside the point, in this practice.
I hesitate to call it a practice,
since it really is only required to be done once,
and then it kind of carries on on its own,
but I don't know what else to call it.
But understanding it is irrelevant.
And the thing that's beautiful about it is that if I were telling you,
Listen, I've got this big pitcher of Kool-Aid here
that I would like you to drink.
Now, I'm not going to tell you what's in it,
but I really want you to drink it, okay?
Will you drink it? Will you trust me to drink it?
Now, in a case like that, it's really intelligent to say,
"Wait a minute, hold it. I don't even know this guy.
And now he's giving me Kool-Aid to drink.
Maybe I should have second thoughts about this.
Maybe I should really consider this, and try to understand,
and try to figure out what's really going on here.
Why would he want me to drink that Kool-Aid?
Why would he want me to do that?
What's in the Kool-Aid? What's this about?"
But when I ask you to look at yourself,
obviously there is no way anyone, I think…
It would take some real strange twisting around for anyone to think
that there could be anything bad come of that.
You may think, " I can't do it,"
but to think that there will be anything bad come of it
is absolutely impossible.
Look at you, that's all I say. Look at you.
I know there's going to be a lot of stories on it, you know, thought,
and things about what this means, and what it doesn't mean,
and this will never work, and how does this compare
with the most excellent Advaita Vedanta teachings
that I've had in the past, and how does it fit into that…
All of that is unnecessary. Really.
It either will work or will not.
And if you do it, you'll find out whether it works or does not work.
And all my metaphors and all of my fancy ways of speaking about it,
and fancy comparisons and so forth
will not have one bit of effect on the question,
Does it work or doesn't it work?
It doesn't matter how silver-tongued I am;
it doesn't matter how clumsy I am.
It either works or it doesn't.
You either can or cannot find a way to do it.
I say you can. And if you try, you will.
But that's either true or false,
and it doesn't take any kind of advanced spiritual understanding
to determine its truth or falsehood,
it just takes trying to do it.
That's the difference here.
And I really don't have any particular concern…
Honest, I really get it.
I really understand the Advaita Vedanta domain.
I really get it. It was my heart.
It was the thing that brought me home;
it was the thing that brought me enlightenment.
I chased every way that I could think of to fill myself
with the delicious sweet nectar of that incomprehensible philosophy.
But it doesn't do us much good.
I have found...
It's my experience that the best way to approach anything is plainly.
Simply.
As if you were really just a human being,
with really just a human capacity for discernment,
and understanding, and intelligence.
And that human capacity,
that human intelligence and that human capacity for discernment
is all that you need here. Really.
No matter whether there's anything to it or not.
No matter whether we are all
will-o'- the-wisps in swamp fog or not.
The way to approach this is just simply.
How do I look at myself? What can I do to do that?
And then try.
What is it that he's talking about when he urges me to look at myself?
What in the world is he talking about? Try.
You are all there is within.
There is no inward but you.
You are that which never changes.
You are that which has never arrived or departed.
Look.
Try.
Hard. Try hard.
Exert yourself. Make effort.
Try, with your effort, with all the effort you can muster,
to bend that beam of attention back upon itself. Try.
So, don't take any of my metaphors really seriously.
They are all done just in order to make a point.
They are no different from any other metaphors.
There is a very small context in which they apply,
and then they break down.
Reality is not susceptible to being communicated in a metaphor,
and a metaphor is all we have to work with,
since it is really not suitable to be communicated by,
"Let me see, what am I going to do next?"
Really not suitable to be communicated by our…
Actually, it's more suitable to be communicated
by ordinary conversation.
Ordinary conversation is actually a much more potent way
to get at the heart of things than inner speculation
and advanced metaphysical investigation into things.
It's a lot more potent way of getting at the heart of things
than Vipassana, than any of the meditation techniques
that have come down the ages to us, no matter how powerful they may be.
And some of them are very powerful;
some of them are really, really powerful.
Vipassana is one of them, Pranayama is another.
Very powerful practices.
But just ordinary human conversation is much more potent
at getting at the heart of this matter.
Look at yourself.
Forget the big Self.
Look at you.
Look at what feels like you.
Try. Try hard.
If you try, you will succeed.
Now, none of this is directed at anything
that has occurred within this retreat,
it's just the kind of thing that pops up into this space here
from time to time as a result of these conversations.
And, as a result of these conversations,
it seems that I get better at communicating this
to the world at large.
It seems that way.
It seems like my skillfulness at this increases
as a result of having the great honor of you guys listening to me
and responding, whether quietly, or by coming up and talking to me,
or by writing me emails, or doing whatever you do.
So I'm not saying, Oh, bad. That's bad. You had the wrong idea there.
I'm just saying that we all really need to get
off our high horses and look at us, look at me, look at you.
I didn't know I was going to say all that.
I just started to kind of apologize for my broken metaphor
and see what happens?
One thing leads to another and, before you know it, there I am.
So, I would love to speak with anybody who will speak with me.
Yes. That was quick.
- Do I know your name? - No, you don't.
May I?
So you don't have to have remembered it.
- So, may I know it now? - Yes. It's Teresa.
Teresa. Hello Teresa.
It's so nice to be sitting up here with you, John.
It's nice to have you here.
I brought my book here…
Are you a note taker?
- No, but I was a question-maker. - Oh, okay.
Or just a little bit.
So, I'm up here to sort of dialogue a little bit with you,
and see and be seen, maybe ask a question or two…
- Have a conversation. - Have a conversation.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I really resonate with what you said about the power of conversations.
I just had a good conversation with Liz
after you dialogued with her at the end of the morning session…
You know, it's funny.
When you say, 'dialogued with her,'
it sounds like some kind of a psycho-speak.
- Does it? - I mean, it may not be.
So, just say a 'conversation' or whatever…
Just talk to her.
I talked to her. She talked to me.
We had a conversation. It is dialogue, but…
And I suppose it is even appropriate,
since it's just two made-up characters talking to each other.
But you and I can have a conversation, right?
- We can talk. - We can talk.
Okay, so…
I've thought a lot about what has been useful with this process for me,
and I think my whole interest in these things
started very young, and I know many…
It seems like you've said and others have said,
"Nothing worked, nothing worked."
And I, this persona, takes it that everything worked for me.
I liked it all. It was all great.
But every time there'd be like a limitation, a point of,
"Oh, that's just not as close, not as close, not as close."
And so there I was, going through Vipassana,
just as one of many examples, and finding out…
With Vipassana, it was so interesting to reflect on that,
I would have these beautiful states at the end of a retreat,
but it was never pointed out really clearly to me anyway,
it was always the thought, "Oh, if I can just do enough of that sitting,
I can stay in that state."
So, the ultimate medicine
that you're giving us has felt very direct.
And then, the fact that you stay on message,
you don't wander off very much.
- I try to stick to the point. - You do.
I sometimes joke that you're a one-trick pony.
I used to say that about myself.
Maybe I got it from you and I forgot.
They say that you forget your sources.
You've got to be careful not to read the National Enquirer
because you'll be quoting things from it.
I hope you haven't seen me in the National Enquirer.
Not yet.
But I think that's… There are…
Now that I've heard you, I see other teachers
who are saying the same thing.
Really? Who are they? I haven't seen any.
Adyashanti.
I don't think he's saying the same thing.
- He does. - Not that I see.
I see it. I hear it all through there now.
Okay. But in any event, that's beside…
I don't want to talk about Adyashanti, I want to talk about you.
But the fact that you stay on it so clearly,
that there's such clarity about it, I find that really, really helpful.
It's been very helpful for me.
So, now I just do it so often, so much of the time. And it's…
And aren't you good? You look good.
I'm not sure where love comes into it, but that's…
When I go to that, that often comes as well.
You know, that recognition of the going to what I am.
And then almost the broadening of the sphere of what I'm aware of,
and then the feeling of oneness,
and then the love will sometimes come, or various things. But it's…
It's my experience that the feeling of oneness, and the expansion,
and the arrival of the feeling of love is temporary.
- They're passing phenomena. - Yes, they are.
They're part of the parade of phenomena.
Yes, they are.
And really, those experiences don't validate or invalidate anything.
- No, they're just fun. - They're just part of...
...the wonder of being human.
- God knows where they come from. - Yeah.
Just like the experience of confusion, it's just part of being human.
- Yeah. Or fear. - And quite beautiful, really...
...quite astonishing to be really befuddled.
Last night, I was driving home,
and we go by back roads to get home rather than get out on the highways.
And I was driving on a road that I drive every day,
pretty much, whenever we leave the house.
And I became confused,
because I thought I was supposed to be going in the opposite direction
than I actually was going in,
by which I mean that I was looking for landmarks,
just glancing for landmarks that weren't there,
because I wasn't going in that direction,
I was going in this direction.
And that little moment of confusion was quite sweet, really,
it was just like a little kiss, you know?
And then I said, "Carla, I'm so confused!"
Just saying that the experiences that are available in this human creature
are quite wondrous.
And I keep doing it because there is still,
I'm still aware, it's almost like I've had…
I understand where it's going, but it's not permanent.
So I keep looking; I keep looking.
Well, there's nothing permanent about the persona,
not even the liberated persona.
And the understanding for you comes and goes?
I don't have any real understanding.
I don't have any real understanding of anything other than the events
that come and go within this life.
And some of them I understand and some of them I don't understand.
But I have no understanding whatsoever about reality,
or about my place in it.
I have no understanding of that at all.
I find that the mechanism of understanding
just doesn't seem to work.
I see, as do you, as does everyone,
I see reality very clearly, very intimately,
but I can't say anything about it; I have no understanding of it.
None. So…
I understand a lot, but I don't understand that.
It's just the case.
Reality is just the case.
Stark. Self-evident.
And those of us, and I am one of them,
those of us who have had any kind of long history
of actually having a supple capacity to understand and to grasp things,
those of us who have that burden are the last ones to see
that there's nothing to understand there,
and that all our understanding is as nothing.
If we think that our understanding is going to bring us reality,
we are confused;
it's just an aspect of our confusion.
And it doesn't hurt us to be confused.
But there's nothing to understand there.
Reality just is the case.
And it's obvious and it's easy to see.
But it wasn't obvious always to you, right?
Oh, no, not at all.
That's what the looking did for you, it made reality obvious.
I was desperately trying to get away from it.
But isn't that right?
That's what the looking does, it makes reality obvious.
Yes, it does.
Yeah, that's the point of the looking.
The point of the looking is to free this creature
from its insane desire to escape from life.
That's the point of the looking.
The effects…
What happens as a result of being freed
from the insane desire to escape from life is different
in all the individual idiosyncratic personas that it happens in.
So, you said something…
I think maybe you talked about it last night,
but I wasn't with you last night in that small group…
That a lot of things…
You marvel at how pieces of the personality fall away,
and I was just wondering if you could share a little of this…
You said, "I'm the best example of what can happen…"
One example that immediately comes to mind,
because it's so kind of dear to my heart...
It used to be, for all of my life, from the time I was a teenager,
when I first stole my parents' checkbook
and flew from L.A. to New York,
and checked into the Plaza Hotel,
and bought a $20,000 Patek Philippe watch on a bad check...
From that time on,
me and any kind of a rational relationship with money was simply…
There just wasn't any, all right?
Money frightened me; money eluded me.
Money was the object of most of my craziest adventures.
I hated it; I really despised it.
I really thought that it was a horrible imposition on a human life
that this thing should have such power and such force.
I would never pay my bills. I would just…
Really, I'd never pay any bills.
I'd wait until they turned it off and then move.
And when catastrophe loomed, which it did often, as you might imagine,
I would be filled with this horror, this real sick,
nauseating horror that would result in me running away from it,
going somewhere else, starting some new scam somewhere else.
Even when I became a little more sane…
Marxism/Leninism kind of made me a little more sane,
because it gave me something that I thought explained the world.
It does explain the world pretty well.
I mean, there are things about it that aren't entirely accurate
but everything we do is like that.
But it gave me a framework in which I could understand
how it had come to pass that things were the way they are,
and we were so afflicted as we are, and money was so powerful,
and we were dupes of the whole system.
So that made me a little saner,
and I actually would start to try to rent a house,
and pay the rent, and things like that, but it never panned out.
And I would still find myself, at the end of some run,
terrified, and nauseated
by the fact that everything had collapsed again.
But that just seemed like the norm.
So that, anytime it came to the point where I was short of money
or on the edge of having difficulty, I would run.
I would never, ever, ever stop and talk to people,
and try to work things out,
try to figure out how to make ends meet.
Never. Never. Not once.
And I remember one day,
it must have been eight or nine years ago.
We were living in Ojai.
And we were doing this,
but it wasn't nearly as well developed as it is now.
I was still convinced that…
For one thing, I was convinced that
what I was actually trying to teach was false,
because I was doing satsang,
but I didn't know what to do about that.
And I knew that there was something I wanted to say
that I had not yet found voice for,
but I knew that wasn't quite it, right?
And then, as has been the case all along, our money ran out,
which happens quite often to us.
And I was standing out in the driveway of the house,
and I could feel that same nauseating kind of ickiness begin to appear,
and I laughed.
So that whole complex of reactions, and actions,
and things that I did when confronted with that terror,
that nauseating terror, that whole complex had fallen away.
The feeling had still returned,
but the whole complex of relationship to it, and understanding of it,
and dealing with it, and not dealing with it,
that had all gone, god knows where.
It just didn't show up anymore.
So, that's one example.
But the examples are endless.
It still occurs, all the time, it still occurs.
You mentioned the one about smoking. That was a great story
I heard once too.
That's a wonderful one. I've never heard that about the money.
- It's really interesting. - Smoking is another one.
- And not exercising is another one. - Oh, you exercise now?
- And cooking is another one. - You cook now?
Yeah, I do. I fancy myself to be pretty handy in the kitchen.
All of those things were things that were impositions, right?
That somehow were deflecting my attention
from what was really important.
God knows what that was.
Because my attention was too scattered and fragmented,
and all these other things, like doing the dishes,
and paying the rent, and paying the electric bill, and so forth…
Yeah, thank you. Just one final question.
You mentioned that it's sometimes excruciating
to be out there in the world.
And I had a thought about that, but I wanted to ask you about that.
I wondered if that was because you see the suffering…
Or you feel the feelings that are present…
It's because it feels bad.
It's because you're feeling the other feelings…
I think so.
…of the other people who are in that suffering,
and because there's not really barriers, you don't put up barriers,
you end up feeling what they're in the midst of,
is that what you think it is?
Part of the apparatus that has disappeared is the apparatus
that allows me to ignore and push aside other people's pain.
- So you see and feel that… - I think that's the case.
And it is, of course, it is even….
- Yeah, it's excruciating. - It's compassion.
We talk about compassion as if it were some soft and sweet thing.
If we can just generate…
In fact, in Mahayana Buddhism,
and I only recently have come to see the point of this...
In Mahayana Buddhism, it is the evocation of compassion
that is sought after in the work for liberation.
It is seen to be that the evocation of compassion, all by itself,
will produce liberation in the individual for whom this occurs.
And it's not compassion like a soft sweetness,
like, "Oh I just love everybody,
and Oh, I really want to be good to everybody.
I want everybody to feel good." It's not like that.
It's feeling pain.
It's having the very exquisite
experience of confusion, anxiety,
the whole stupid way that we go about trying to mask that from ourselves,
all that is very much present when I'm around crowds of people.
Not in retreats, because in retreats,
we're all kind of focused on the same thing.
But in ordinary, everyday
intercourse with the world, it's very…
And that's compassion.
And it is that that provides the actual basis
for our desire to be helpful to other people.
It's because we all feel it;
we are all more or less ineffective at keeping that out.
We all try to keep it out; we all try very hard.
And, for example, that's one of the reasons
why we're so quick to identify people with negative identifications.
Because we can see, "That sucks, that person there sucks big,
and I don't want to be around them.
That's a bad person, I don't want to be around them."
But really, it's just a person.
It's just a persona that is filled with pain, and confusion,
and mostly inadequate structures trying to deal with that,
and help them relieve their pain,
and help them relieve their suffering.
But that whole apparatus is so fraught
with the sickness, with the disease,
that it just adds to the burden of pain itself.
And that's what you feel, it's that.
And we all feel it.
You get around a crowd a people that are shucking and jiving,
and trying to persuade themselves that everything's cool,
and we got it all together,
and everything's right on, and you'll see.
You'll see, man.
I hate to use a word like this, but I will,
the vibes are palpable.
And it just is the case…
Without regard to what I mean by this, because it's metaphorical,
I really see that humanity is a single creature.
It doesn't mean there are not discrete individuals,
it's made of up discrete individuals,
but humanity itself is a single creature,
and there is nothing whatsoever that occurs within the creature
that is humanity
that does not affect all parts of humanity,
sometimes in a big way, sometimes unnoticeably.
- I know what that means now. - Yeah.
And you said that in Mahayana
there's something about awakening through compassion…
- Evoking compassion. - Through evoking compassion…
And it brings up the question,
Do you believe that all the awake teachers,
and I'm defining that as where the fear has fallen away,
the fear of life has fallen away,
so there is what we have been talking about this whole retreat,
that that has happened whether those people are conscious or not
of actually having really seen their true nature, who they are?
Yes, I think that that happens as a result of the direct contact
of the apparatus with the reality of one's own nature.
So that is the only way.
Yes, I believe that to be the case. But I don't know, maybe I'm wrong.
But that can happen without anyone noticing it, too.
That's what I would assume
that must be the case, or if it were really obvious,
everybody would be talking like you are.
That's right.
And the fact is that
I think that most of the teachers, past and present,
who strike me as having an authentic sense of what's actually happening,
although I don't think they speak directly about it,
and I don't think they maybe see it directly,
all the teachers who have some authentic sense
of what's actually taking place,
and whose expression communicates the authenticity of their experience,
they have all had the fear of life disappear from them
as a result of having touched the reality of their nature,
mostly accidently, in the course of, probably,
spiritual practices and spiritual aspiration.
But, since it doesn't happen as a direct result of some action,
such as trying to get a look at themselves,
since that's not how it occurred,
they don't know that that's what happened.
I think that's as true of Ramana as it is of anybody else.
Maybe Nisargadatta is the only one...
- Nisargadatta is a little close. - Yes, a little closer...
The two things about Ramana and Nisargadatta
that make them stand apart…
I mean, one of things that makes them stand apart is
neither one of them had a teacher.
Nisargadatta's teacher told him
to hold on to the I Am and then dropped dead.
But he stuck to that one clear instruction.
That one clear instruction he stayed with.
And Ramana never had a teacher.
He had an experience that came from, basically,
an adolescent fancy of pretending to be dead
in order to deal with his own preoccupation with death,
which was occasioned by his father's sudden and early death.
But Ramana then went and read all the books.
He ran away to Tiruvannamalai as a child, as a 16-year-old boy,
and had a close friend there who brought him all the books.
And Ramana himself says that he wanted to find out
what had happened to him.
And I don't think he ever really saw what had happened to him.
I think he had a sense of it, more so than most anybody else,
but I don't think he ever really quite got it.
We're talking now about Ramana, the man.
I don't go into Bhagavan and all of that,
mostly because of the fact that once somebody said to Ramana,
"Bhagavan, Bhagavan, what about blah-blah-blah?"
And Ramana said, "If I am Bhagavan, you're Bhagavan;
answer the question yourself."
Ramana was just a human being, surrounded and kind of captured
by a coterie of devotees
with serious and very energetic religious viewpoints.
So, I don't think he really quite understood,
and if you read his conversations with people,
you can see that he's quite erudite and quite capable
of speaking about a vast range of spiritual and religious practices.
But all are not things that he so much recommends.
He likes Pranayama, but for reasons
other than the normal reasons for Pranayama.
And he's able to give people advice on a wide range of practices,
but he always comes back to the same thing:
"For whom are these practices?"
"For whom is this pain? For whom is this pleasure?"
And that's close, but no cigar.
And Nisargadatta is a little closer.
But still, there is, in nobody that I know of,
this sense that
the problem has nothing whatsoever to do
with anything at all within the life.
It has nothing whatsoever to do
with our stupidity, our ***, our greed,
our ignorance, our failure to understand non-duality,
our selfishness, or any of those things.
Nor does it have anything to do
with our compassion and our sweetness or any of that.
I think when you spoke about that before this morning,
about the structure of the personality, of the persona…
I've always thought of it as the body-mind,
but you used all of those terms, which is very helpful.
I just want to thank you for that.
- I think that was really useful. - I'm very happy to hear that.
I think that was very useful just to clarify,
just to distinguish what you are pointing at, and it's really…
I just know it to be true.
And that's the distinction I make.
I don't know anybody who actually says,
There's no problem in any of that.
You don't need to rid yourself of resistance.
You don't need to rid yourself of clinging.
You don't need to rid yourself of your fearfulness,
or your greed, or anything else.
And just 'yourself,' which is just a humble term,
as opposed to consciousness.
That's why I say 'you' instead of any of that, because it's you.
It's just a humble you. That's great.
And there's no problem in any of this.
This is all effect; it's all symptoms of this disease.
And that's the distinction between what I'm speaking about
and what I've seen anybody speak about.
I don't have any…
And don't get me wrong, it's not that there's anything wrong with it,
but the fact is that some of these practices,
and some of these ways of practicing,
even the non-practicing practicing, can be helpful.
But they can't be helpful in freeing you of the fear of life.
They can be helpful much more after the fear of life is gone,
to make you more skillful, and more insightful, and so forth.
Or maybe temporarily they can open you up
so you're just in a very pleasurable
non-fearful state, but then it leaves…
But the non-fearful state is of no use to us. Really, it's not.
- It just comes and goes. - I know, it comes and goes.
I was in a non-fearful state for a year and a half.
I was enlightened for a year and a half.
I mean, I'm saying that kind of facetiously,
but I don't know what else to call it.
Everything about the state that I was in for a year and a half,
as a result of a really energetic entanglement
with the Advaita Vedanta teachings,
everything about that state,
I can only say that I was enlightened,
which is kind of convenient,
because then I can say this is post-enlightenment.
We're in a post-enlightenment stage.
You've got yourself a niche there, you really do.
Post-enlightenment niche. That's good, that's very good.
Well, I want to let somebody else sit in this chair.
It's been a pleasure.
I want to really thank you, John, for your teaching,
for having this opportunity to sit up here with you.
I'm just so glad I came here.
I'm glad you came here too, and you're very welcome.
Stay in touch. Okay?
Okay. Anybody else?
So, is there anybody else who would like to speak with me,
or are you all going to just shun me?
Yes.
I knew you weren't going to shun me.
I just say that…
Hi.
Now, I don't know your name. I haven't forgotten your name.
My name, right now, is Will.
Will.
But like you, I've used many names.
Aha. Oh, you must be the guy from New Jersey.
I'm from Joisey.
I pahk my cah in the pahking lot.
- Camden County. - Another home boy, huh?
- Yes, I was in Camden County. - Really?
- You bet. - Wow.
I spent seven years with a million dollar view.
But Riverfront is not there anymore, you'll be happy to know.
What happened to me this morning is what I want to ask you about.
Two questions.
This morning I got up, went to Ventura Beach.
I'm sitting on the Z-bench, and looking out on the ocean,
and I'm hanging out with the surfer dudes.
And I'm on a conference call with the people who were,
I'm sure Dave has talked about, the Impact Project.
And when I described where I was, and what I was seeing,
and the sunrise came up over the mountains,
and I'm sitting there on the bench
with my Starbucks coffee, on the cell phone
which, when I grew up was impossible, there was no such thing…
It was a rotary dial thing that hung on the wall…
When I grew up, it was, "Number, please..."
So, it pretty much stopped the conversation,
because I told him this story that I had told Dave the day before,
that I was talking to the owner of the auto shop that I'm managing now.
Her son is in Nevada, in prison, at Southern Desert,
it's right close to Vegas.
And he was talking to me on the phone, and he said,
"You know, the cops came in my cell, and they tore up all my stuff,
and they threw my property on the floor,
and then he wanted me to pick it up so they could search it.
And I refused."
So, he was just engaged in this adversarial relationship.
And then, I said, "You know, Pete.
That's going to happen to you a hundred more times."
At least.
"And you've been down twelve years,
so you've already had it happen like fifty times already,
so why do you still feel angst over that?"
I said, "Pete, you are not that property.
You're not those cassette tapes on the floor.
Those are just objects. They have no meaning."
And so he kind of got that.
And I said, "You know, I used to get upset about stuff like that
a scratch on the car, or something like that.
But I don't have any of that problem anymore."
I mean, I'm totally broke;
my brother invested my inheritance
and lost it all in the real estate business.
He went bankrupt last month. Just got his final disposition.
And I said, "The shop is not making any money,
and your mother's house is four months behind on the mortgage,
and it's upside down anyway.
But I don't have any problems. You know why, Pete?"
He says, "Why?" I say, "Because I can walk down the street.
There's nothing better than just walking down the street."
And there I was, sitting on the bench looking at the ocean,
of which I had dreamed for many years, every night,
because I grew up forty minutes from the Atlantic Ocean…
Now I'm looking at the Pacific Ocean.
I'm like, "I don't have any problems. There can't be any problems."
So, what occurred to me was that I was looking out there at the ocean,
and the surfer dudes were out there having a grand old time.
And it seemed to me like they got it too.
They just get up in the morning, wax their board,
and go out there and surf.
And they ride a wave, and go back out and ride another one.
So, what do you make of that?
What do I make of that?
Well, you know, life consists of a lot of different kinds of experience.
And, in your lifetime, you have had many kinds of experience,
some good, some bad, most of them mediocre.
Not very much at all.
This is an experience that has come to you,
this experience of feeling the freedom of being on the beach,
and the sun rising, and being free of deep concern
about the problems in your life.
Probably, it will pass.
Because experiences do that, they come and go.
You can have an experience of sweet harmony and bliss
sometimes for a long time but since, like this experience,
there was a time when it was not here,
there will be a time again when it's not here.
It is a great gift to be able to enjoy it when it is here,
and some of us can't even do that.
Perhaps the joint gave you that gift of being able to enjoy it
when it is here.
But it will go.
And it will be replaced by experiences
that may well be problematic, and complicated,
and frustrating, and impotent.
And those, too, will be replaced by other experiences.
Some of them may be bright, shining, wonderful, sweet experiences,
and some of them may be ugly and terrible experiences.
If we pin our hopes on a current state staying,
we're doomed, because no state stays.
Like your period of enlightenment.
Exactly. Precisely.
But what remains, whether the state is enlightened
or sweet and open and uncomplicated,
or twisted and conflicted and contracted,
what remains untouched is you.
It's you.
This apparatus, this personality, this history,
which contains the history, the whole history of your life,
and your struggles, and your failures,
and your time in the joint, whatever.
- My story. - Your story, right.
It has a function, which is to protect you,
and to make it possible for you to get what's good when it shows up;
this whole life, this whole personality, that's its function.
That's what it comes into being for.
In human life, these days,
probably since the beginning of *** sapiens anyway,
in human life,
that apparatus gets infected at the very beginning of the life,
so that it is based on the premise that there's great danger here,
that life is treacherous, that it could betray me at any moment,
and that I am trapped in this life.
Now, when states come that don't contain those particular feelings,
our inclination is to say, "Oh, that's over now."
But the apparatus is off;
it's a false premise that it operates on,
because life really isn't out to get you.
Life is to be seen by you, nothing more.
So, anything that happens within this life,
within this personality, within this apparatus, this character
that is pleasing, will pass,
just as anything that happens that is not pleasing will pass.
But there will be no time whatsoever when that underlying,
very small alienation from life, that fear of life, is not present.
It can be masked, it can be interpreted as something else,
but it's always here, small, murmuring in the background.
Murmuring.
In the greatest of states, which we may not even be aware of,
and which we may deny,
it takes the form of the certainty
that this too will pass,
and the disappointment that attends that.
I feel it as an underlying anxiety in the background…
- Yes, that's it. - A dissatisfaction.
Yeah, things are looking good now, but…
But I know better than that...
When the Giants score a touchdown, it looks good,
but they're going to turn the ball over.
And to see that…
It's sometimes hard for people to see that,
because it seems to invalidate the value of the sweetness
that is present now. But it doesn't.
To see that doesn't invalidate that.
It just… If anything, it makes it sweeter.
I can look at my checkbook balance,
but I'm still sitting on the bench in front of the ocean.
Checkbook, ocean.
- Which one am I going to focus on? - When you're talking to your friend,
you're talking about bankruptcy, and all of that.
So, what's needed for humans is not ways
in which to evoke or prolong
experiences of quiet, and peacefulness,
and the awe of the sunrise, or the sunset…
It doesn't rise over there, it rises in the mountains.
It's not to find new ways to hold on to those things, or to evoke them,
or ways to banish the things that are lurking in the background
that are sure to come back again.
The hope for humanity has to be to do away with the underlying disease
that is that false premise that says, Life is treacherous,
life is going to swallow me up;
this life is that last place I want to end up.
And since that is prior to…
It is the shaping force of the persona itself,
and prior to the appearance of the persona,
that disease, that underlying anxiety and discontent,
there's nothing whatsoever that you can do to the personality
that will put an end to that.
You can do things in the personality
that will give you periods of respite from the anxiety, and so forth,
but there's nothing you can do in the personality to fix the personality,
because the problem doesn't rest there.
You can fix this one thing, but then it crops up over here.
Something else shows up.
Because that's not the problem.
The things that we see to be the problem
are symptoms of the problem, effects of the problem.
And so, even though sometimes we can do things
that will make those symptoms be palliated
and disappear into the background,
they just pop up somewhere else, some new symptom.
And that's the whole point of this work that I bring here.
The problem is not the effects.
The problem is not the fearfulness,
or the anxiety, or any of that stuff.
The problem is the false premise.
And the false premise can't be dealt with by understanding,
within an apparatus in which understanding is a tool
it uses to protect you from this inexistent danger of life.
And what I've discovered, and I had an insight,
which I've been trying to describe now for twelve years…
The insight is very quick and very clear,
but the description of it is very difficult,
because of the limitations of our ability to speak about things…
But what I've discovered is that,
if you will take the beam of your attention,
the same beam of your attention
that identifies for you what's good and bad,
what's going to help you and what's going to hurt you,
that same beam of attention
that you can use to fix very tightly on something
that seems like something you want to hold on to…
If you can find a way to turn that beam of attention
inward to its source, to you,
to what it actually feels like to be you,
that is the same always,
regardless of all the comings and goings within the personality,
within the life itself,
if you can touch that,
just for a tenth of a second, that cures the disease.
It doesn't produce a payoff, right?
Some practices, if you practice them,
they will produce an immediate payoff in the life itself,
in the personality itself,
where you get a release, or an opening, or contentment, etc.
It's like going to L.A. Fitness in the morning.
Yeah. Yeah, right.
I come out, I feel great, and I'm really glad I did that.
This has no immediate effect like that.
This is more like taking antibiotics.
You take antibiotics, you don't feel anything from them.
You know, you don't take an antibiotic pill,
and then you say, "Oh, that feels good; I hope that stays."
This is more like antibiotics.
You just do it, and it has this incredible effect
of snuffing out the false premise,
of just taking it away.
You don't even notice that it's gone sometimes.
It just takes it away.
And when it goes away, this whole life,
the thing that has shaped it, and the thing that has directed it
in the direction it goes, is gone.
So the whole life, then, goes
through a kind of a rearrangement of its relationships,
and its opinions about things, and its role, actually, in life.
And everything changes.
And the fear goes; the fear of life is gone.
Fear doesn't go, I mean, fear is a good thing.
You know, if you're crossing a street and a truck is heading at you,
you ought to be afraid.
But this neurotic existential fear goes.
And the distance between you and your life,
the need constantly to be watching it,
"Well, is it going to stay?
What's going to happen now?"
"Oh, this feels really good; I hope it stays;
I hope it doesn't go too soon."
That goes away. It just all departs.
So, that's what I come for.
And you can do this; anybody can do this.
It's not complicated,
and it doesn't take any advanced understandings
of any kind whatsoever.
So, all humans have a human nature they can look at.
That's right; that's right.
And that's my second question.
One of things that drew me to Buddhism was its practicality.
If it didn't work, then I'm not going to do that,
because what good is that?
- That's not helpful at all. - That's right.
And, half of this question arose last night,
when I got the inspiration to sit down with my guitar
and write a blues tune.
I got the first verse and the hook done,
and then when I got to the second verse,
I realized I hadn't finished the retreat yet,
so I needed more information.
But this is on the analogy that you use about the white piece of paper.
And the white piece of paper, that's me, my human nature.
And at the top of the paper I write my name,
and then the rest of it is the story of my life.
Yes, that's right.
And, to look at myself is not to look at what I did…
That's right, it's not to look at what's happening.
- Not look at the story part of it. - That's right.
But that's inevitably what my ego will try to do.
It will reassert itself because it's threatened.
You want to be careful with using the word 'ego'
in your assessment of things.
Ego is a really overused and overrated concept.
I should pick a different word.
What I meant to say is that, in terms of defining that particular word…
and I'll never use it again…
Whoever you consider yourself to be, that's your ego.
So if you say, "Who are you?" "Oh, my name is Will."
And if somebody introduces Will at a party,
"Oh, here's Will, he's a manager."
But I'm not really a manager, that's my job.
I'm not really a fireman or an attorney.
You're not even really Will.
That's some label somebody gave me.
I had no choice in the matter.
- I didn't even pick it. - Right, you didn't have a choice.
I've had a lot of names I had a choice in, but this one I didn't.
I kind of like the other name I picked for myself,
and I'm going to keep that one alive,
and use that as my stage name for playing guitar.
I liked my name when I was on the Ten Most Wanted list, it was Jim Morgan.
- I liked that name. - Now, that is a cool name.
I can't use it anymore because it was…
But the question is, looking at myself
is not to look at the print on the page,
- but to look at the page itself. - That's exactly right.
And you kind of have to look through the print to see the page.
That's exactly right.
But it's possible.
And you may not even know that you succeed,
because it happens so quickly.
It's of so little consequence, this movement.
It seems to take a lot of effort, it took me a lot of effort,
but the actual accomplishment is nothing.
The way to tell whether you succeeded is that you keep doing it.
And by "keep doing it" I mean
you may have a lot of ideas about why you're doing it,
like, "I'm going to do it because of this, that, or the other thing…"
But if there's no payoff to it,
the ideas that you have about why you're doing it
are just stories about what is happening anyway.
So, if you continue to do it,
it means that you're on the road to health,
to being free of the disease.
But you may not notice that you succeeded; and you may notice.
I mean, it's really obvious what you feel like,
what it feels like to be you.
And when glimpsed, it's like, "Oh, I know that."
That's the way it's always been.
When I was a kid, it was like that.
But you're right, that's exactly the case.
You are the white paper.
And on that paper, we tend to write a story.
One of things Dave said years ago in the Impact Project
was that humans are the only species on the planet
that are trying to be something they're not.
And I always remember that when I see Grady the puppy,
and he's just a puppy, he's just doing puppy stuff all the time.
He's never not a puppy.
That's right.
Keep in mind, too, though,
that the facility to make a metaphor
like. "humans are always trying to be what they're not,"
that's satisfying and resonates, that doesn't help at all.
There's still an emptiness there.
It's still there; the anxiety is still there.
And that's what we do, even in the spiritual,
and especially in the spiritual arena.
We hear things that seem to speak so clearly about our actual state
that we just take them and believe them.
And pretty soon, when somebody says,
"There's nobody doing anything and nothing to do be done."
"What do you mean, you're doing something?
You're not talking; there's no talking going on."
"Speech doesn't occur." And we say, "Ah, thank you, thank you."
- "Namaste." - Namaste.
But you don't have to go through that.
You're right about Buddhism; Buddhism is practical.
This is the most practical of anything that has ever been proposed.
There's nothing to it but the practical.
- Well, thank you. - You're very welcome.
Glad to meet you.
You're not in New Jersey anymore.
Not going back.
Okay, one more, anybody?
- Hi, what's your name? - My name is Joseph.
Joseph. Hello. Did I know that already?
- No. - Okay, that's good.
I mostly just came up to sit up here and say hi.
Hi.
I guess you stem me now to just tell you a little bit
how I found you online, and just listening to you talk.
I've been finding it really helpful and useful.
And that's kind of where I'm at with it. So, thank you.
So, you found me online, and here you are now.
Here I am now, face to face.
You don't give me much to work with here…
I know, I'm sorry.
But I'm going to try to say something.
Thanks.
The only thing that can make anything that I do or say helpful
is if you do what I ask you to do.
And what I mean by that… Because I have no idea, right?
I'm just speaking to everybody,
including those that hear this tape later.
The only way that my presence in your life
can be helpful is if you do what I ask you to do.
If you get some satisfaction from it, like
"That sounds right, and that feels good, and all of that,"
and that's the end of it, then I'm no help to you at all.
I'm just one more trip that has come in, and will depart.
But if you do this work,
if you make an honest and human attempt
to get the direct experience of what it actually feels like to be you
underneath all of this,
then you've been helped.
Yeah, it just makes sense. There's a few times when it's this…
- I tasted that. And then… - Yes, that's all it takes.
That's all it takes.
That's the other amazing thing about this.
In every other regard, it takes a prolonged period of practice,
or understanding, or sitting at the feet of the guru, or whatever.
This takes nothing at all.
You do it once, and it's done.
I used to be… I'm not going to say that. I'm not.
You do it once, and it's done,
although the effects of it may take a very long time to play out.
But once you've done it, it's over. The end is sure.
It just makes a lot of sense,
and I find myself wanting to attach other understandings around it,
and just kind of watching that process.
It won't hurt you, but it won't help you either.
Yeah, right, right. So. Okay.
It's just what we do, we look for understandings.
And they don't hurt, but they don't help.
- Right. - They're neutral.
- So, okay. - It's my pleasure.
Well, thanks for letting me sit up here.
I'm glad you found your way up here.
Okay, I guess we're going to call it a day.
Except for the folks that I'm going to meet with tonight,
which I understand is a crowd tonight, huh?
I'll try to be here on time, so we can move through it.
I love you all. That's really the truth.
That is. It's the real truth. I love you all.
And I am enormously grateful to you for your presence here,
and for your willingness to talk to me, and contend with me,
and try to hear what it is I'm saying.
This is a huge gift.
So thank you.