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are, you have divided yourself from reality, from the
universe, from God, or whatever you want to call that, the
tat in tat tvam asi. You will find constantly, if you are
interested in anything like this  in psychoanalysis, in
Gestalt therapy, in sensitivity training, in any kind of yoga
or what have you  that there will be that funny sensation
of what I will call "spiritual greed" that can be aroused by
somebody indicating to you, "Mmmm, there are still
higher stages for you to attain. You should meet my
guru." So, you might say, "Now, to be truly realized you
have to get to the point where you're not seeking
anymore." Then you begin to think, "We will now be non-
seekers," like disciples of Krishnamurti, who because he
says he doesn't read any spiritual books can't read anything
but mystery stories, and become spiritually unspiritual.
Well, you find that, too, is what is called in Zen "legs on a
snake." It is irrelevant. You don't need not to seek,
because you don't need anything. It is like crawling into a
hole and pulling the hole in after you.
The great master of this technique was a Buddhist
scholar who lived about 200 A.D. called Nagarjuna. He
invented a whole dialectic, and he created madhyamaka,
where the leader of the students would simply destroy all
their ideas, absolutely abolish their philosophical notions,
and they'd get the heebie-jeebies. He didn't have the
heebie-jeebies. He seemed perfectly relaxed in not having
any particular point of view. They said, "Teacher, how
can you stand it? We have to have something to hang on
to." "Who does? Who are you?" And eventually you
discover, of course, that it is not necessary to hang on to or
rely on anything. There is nothing to rely on, because
you're it. It is like asking the question, "Where is the
universe?" By that I mean the whole universe 
whereabouts is it in space? Everything in it is falling
around everything else, but there's no concrete floor
underneath for the thing to crash on. You can think of
infinite space if you like  you don't have to think of
curved space, the space that goes out and out and out
forever and ever and has no end: What is that? Of course,
it is you. What else could it be? The universe is
delightfully arranged so that as it looks at itself, in order
not to be one-sided and prejudiced, it looks at itself from
an uncountable number of points of view. We thus avoid
solipsism, as if I were to have the notion that it is only me
that is really here, and you are all in my dream. Of course,
that point of view cannot really be disputed except by
imagining a conference of solipsists arguing as to which
one of them was the one that was really there.
Now, if you understand what I am saying by using
your intelligence, and then take the next step and say, "I
understood it now, but I didn't feel it," then next I raise the
question, "Why do you want to feel it?" You say, "I want
something more," but that is again spiritual greed, and you
can only say that because you didn't understand it. There is
nothing to pursue, because you are it. You always were it,
and to put it in Christian terms or Jewish terms, if you
don't know that you are God from the beginning, what
happens is that you try to become God by force.
Therefore you become violent and obstreperous and this,
that, and the other. All our violence, all our
competitiveness, all our terrific anxiety to survive is
because we didn't know from the beginning that we were
it.
Well, then you would say, "If only we did know
from the beginning," as in fact you did when you were a
baby. But then everybody says,
"Well, nothing will ever happen." But it did happen,
didn't it? And some of it is pretty messy. Some people
say, "Well, take the Hindus. It is basic to Hindu religion
that we are all God in disguise, and that the world is an
illusion." All that is a sort of half-truth, but if that is the
case  if really awakened Hindus by the knowledge of
their union with the godhead would simply become inert,
why then Hindu music, the most incredibly complex,
marvelous technique? When they sit and play, they laugh
at each other. They are enjoying themselves enormously
with very complicated musical games. But when you go
to the symphony everybody is dressed in evening dress
and with the most serious expressions. When the
orchestra gets up, the audience sits down, and it is like a
kind of church. There is none of that terrific zest, where
the drummer, the tabla player, laughs at the sarod player as
they compete with each other in all kinds of marvelous
improvisations. So, if you do find out, by any chance,
who you really are, instead of becoming merely lazy, you
start laughing. And laughing leads to dancing, and
dancing needs music, and we can play with each other for
a change.
INTRODUCTION
TO BUDDHISM
CHAPTER SIX
The idea of a yana, or vehicle, comes from the basic
notion or image of Buddhism as a raft for crossing a river.
This shore is ordinary everyday consciousness such as we
have, mainly the consciousness of being an ego or a
sensitive mind locked up inside a mortal body  the
consciousness of being you in particular and nobody else.
The other shore is release, or nirvana, a word that means
literally "blow out," as one says, whew, in heaving a sigh
of relief. Nirvana is never, never to be interpreted as a
state of extinction or a kind of consciousness in which you
are absorbed into an infinitely formless, luminous ocean
that could best be described as purple Jell-O, but kind of
spiritual. Horrors! It is not meant to be that at all.
Nirvana has many senses, but the primary meaning of it is
that it is this everyday life, just as we have it now, but seen
and felt in a completely different way. Buddhism is called
in general a dharma, and this word is often mistranslated
as "the law." It is better translated as "the doctrine," and
still better translated as "the method." The dharma was
formulated originally by the Buddha, who was the son of a
north Indian raja living very close to Nepal who was
thriving shortly after 600 B.C. The word buddha is a title. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]