Physic :
Heisenberg's Physics and Philosophy
Psychology : The value
of Psychotic Experience by Allan Watts
Psychology : About Depression
Psychology : Gates to Buddhist
practice by Chagdud tulku
Psychology : Buddhism in our
daily life by C.T. Shen Lecture 1
Psychology : Buddhism in our
daily life by C.T. Shen Lecture 2
Psychology : Buddhism in our
daily life by C.T. Shen Lecture 3
Psychology : Buddhism in our
daily life by C.T. Shen Lecture 4
History of Literature : A small biography of D.T.
Suzuki
Theory of arts : Description
Philosophy of Sciences :
What is
Sciences ?
Heisenberg's Physics and PhilosophyWerner Heisenberg (1958)
Physics and Philosophy
Source: Physics and Philosophy, 1958; Chapter 2 (History)
Published: by George Allen and Unwin Edition, 1959.
Chapter 2 (History)
The History of Quantum Theory
THE origin of quantum theory is connected with a well-known phenomenon, which
did not belong to the central parts of atomic physics. Any piece of matter when
it is heated starts to glow, gets red hot and white hot at higher temperatures.
The colour does not depend much on the surface of the material, and for a black
body it depends solely on the temperature. Therefore, the radiation emitted by
such a black body at high temperatures is a suitable object for physical
research; it is a simple phenomenon that should find a simple explanation in
terms of the known laws for radiation and heat. The attempt made at the end of
the nineteenth century by Lord Rayleigh and Jeans failed, however, and revealed
serious difficulties. It would not be possible to describe these difficulties
here in simple terms. It must be sufficient to state that the application of the
known laws did not lead to sensible results. When Planck, in 1895, entered this
line of research he tried to turn the problem from radiation to the radiating
atom. This turning did not remove any of the difficulties inherent in the
problem, but it simplified the interpretation of the empirical facts. It was
just at this time, during the summer of 1900, that Curlbaum and Rubens in Berlin
had made very accurate new measurements of the spectrum of heat radiation. When
Planck heard of these results he tried to represent them by simple mathematical
formulas which looked plausible from his research on the general connection
between heat and radiation. One day Planck and Rubens met for tea in Planck's
home and compared Rubens' latest results with a new formula suggested by Planck.
The comparison showed a complete agreement. This was the discovery of Planck's
law of heat radiation.
It was at the same time the beginning of intense theoretical work for Planck.
What was the correct physical interpretation of the new formula? Since Planck
could, from his earlier work, translate his formula easily into a statement
about the radiating atom (the so-called oscillator), he must soon have found
that his formula looked as if the oscillator could only contain discrete quanta
of energy - a result that was so different from anything known in classical
physics that he certainly must have refused to believe it in the beginning. But
in a period of most intensive work during the summer of 1900 he finally
convinced himself that there was no way of escaping from this conclusion. It was
told by Planck's son that his father spoke to him about his new ideas on a long
walk through the Grunewald, the wood in the suburbs of Berlin. On this walk he
explained that he felt he had possibly made a discovery of the first rank,
comparable perhaps only to the discoveries of Newton. So Planck must have
realised at this time that his formula had touched the foundations of our
description of nature, and that these foundations would one day start to move
from their traditional present location toward a new and as yet unknown position
of stability. Planck, who was conservative in his whole outlook, did not like
this consequence at all, but he published his quantum hypothesis in December of
1900.
The idea that energy could be emitted or absorbed only in discrete energy quanta
was so new that it could not be fitted into the traditional framework of
physics. An attempt by Planck to reconcile his new hypothesis with the older
laws of radiation failed in the essential points. It took five years until the
next step could be made in the new direction.
This time it was the young Albert Einstein, a revolutionary genius among the
physicists, who was not afraid to go further away from the old concepts. There
were two problems in which he could make use of the new ideas. One was the
so-called photoelectric effect, the emission of electrons from metals under the
influence of light. The experiments, especially those of Lenard, had shown that
the energy of the emitted electrons did not depend on the intensity of the
light, but only on its colour or, more precisely, on its frequency. This could
not be understood on the basis of the traditional theory of radiation. Einstein
could explain the observations by interpreting Planck's hypothesis as saying
that light consists of quanta of energy travelling through space. The energy of
one light quantum should, in agreement with Planck's assumptions, be equal to
the frequency of the light multiplied by Planck's constant.
The other problem was the specific heat of solid bodies. The traditional theory
led to values for the specific heat which fitted the observations at higher
temperatures but disagreed with them at low ones. Again Einstein was able to
show that one could understand this behaviour by applying the quantum hypothesis
to the elastic vibrations of the atoms in the solid body. These two results
marked a very important advance, since they revealed the presence of Planck's
quantum of action - as his constant is called among the physicists - in several
phenomena, which had nothing immediately to do with heat radiation. They
revealed at the same time the deeply revolutionary character of the new
hypothesis, since the first of them led to a description of light completely
different from the traditional wave picture. Light could either be interpreted
as consisting of electromagnetic waves, according to Maxwell's theory, or as
consisting of light quanta, energy packets travelling through space with high
velocity. But could it be both? Einstein knew, of course, that the well-known
phenomena of diffraction and interference can be explained only on the basis of
the wave picture. He was not able to dispute the complete contradiction between
this wave picture and the idea of the light quanta; nor did he even attempt to
remove the inconsistency of this interpretation. He simply took the
contradiction as something which would probably be understood only much later.
In the meantime the experiments of Becquerel, Curie and Rutherford had led to
some clarification concerning the structure of the atom. In 1911 Rutherford's
observations on the interaction of a-rays penetrating through matter resulted in
his famous atomic model. The atom is pictured as consisting of a nucleus, which
is positively charged and contains nearly the total mass of the atom, and
electrons, which circle around the nucleus like the planets circle around the
sun. The chemical bond between atoms of different elements is explained as an
interaction between the outer electrons of the neighbouring atoms; it has not
directly to do with the atomic nucleus. The nucleus determines the chemical
behaviour of the atom through its charge which in turn fixes the number of
electrons in the neutral atom. Initially this model of the atom could not
explain the most characteristic feature of the atom, its enormous stability. No
planetary system following the laws of Newton's mechanics would ever go back to
its original configuration after a collision with another such system. But an
atom of the element carbon, for instance, will still remain a carbon atom after
any collision or interaction in chemical binding.
The explanation for this unusual stability was given by Bohr in 1913, through
the application of Planck's quantum hypothesis. If the atom can change its
energy only by discrete energy quanta, this must mean that the atom can exist
only in discrete stationary states, the lowest of which is the normal state of
the atom. Therefore, after any kind of interaction the atom will finally always
fall back into its normal state.
By this application of quantum theory to the atomic model, Bohr could not only
explain the stability of the atom but also. in some simple cases, give a
theoretical interpretation of the line spectra emitted by the atoms after the
excitation through electric discharge or heat. His theory rested upon a
combination of classical mechanics for the motion of the electrons with quantum
conditions, which were imposed upon the classical motions for defining the
discrete stationary states of the system. A consistent mathematical formulation
for those conditions was later given by Sommerfeld. Bohr was well aware of the
fact that the quantum conditions spoil in some way the consistency of Newtonian
mechanics. In the simple case of the hydrogen atom one could calculate from
Bohr's theory the frequencies of the light emitted by the atom, and the
agreement with the observations was perfect. Yet these frequencies were
different from the orbital frequencies and their harmonies of the electrons
circling around the nucleus, and this fact showed at once that the theory was
still full of contradictions. But it contained an essential part of the truth.
It did explain qualitatively the chemical behaviour of the atoms and their line
spectra; the existence of the discrete stationary states was verified by the
experiments of Franck and Hertz, Stern and Gerlach.
Bohr's theory had opened up a new line of research. The great amount of
experimental material collected by spectroscopy through several decades was now
available for information about the strange quantum laws governing the motions
of the electrons in the atom. The many experiments of chemistry could be used
for the same purpose. It was from this time on that the physicists learned to
ask the right questions; and asking the right question is frequently more than
halfway to the solution of the problem.
What were these questions? Practically all of them had to do with the strange
apparent contradictions between the results of different experiments. How could
it be that the same radiation that produces interference patterns, and therefore
must consist of waves, also produces the photoelectric effect, and therefore
must consist of moving particles? How could it be that the frequency of the
orbital motion of the electron in the atom does not show up in the frequency of
the emitted radiation? Does this mean that there is no orbital motion? But if
the idea of orbital motion should be incorrect, what happens to the electrons
inside the atom? One can see the electrons move through a cloud chamber, and
sometimes they are knocked out of an atom- why should they not also move within
the atom? It is true that they might be at rest in the normal state of the atom,
the state of lowest energy. But there are many states of higher energy, where
the electronic shell has an angular momentum. There the electrons cannot
possibly be at rest. One could add a number of similar examples. Again and again
one found that the attempt to describe atomic events in the traditional terms of
physics led to contradictions.
Gradually, during the early twenties, the physicists became accustomed to these
difficulties, they acquired a certain vague knowledge about where trouble would
occur, and they learned to avoid contradictions. They knew which description of
an atomic event would be the correct one for the special experiment under
discussion. This was not sufficient to form a consistent general picture of what
happens in a quantum process, but it changed the minds of the physicists in such
a way that they somehow got into the spirit of quantum theory. Therefore, even
some time before one had a consistent formulation of quantum theory one knew
more or less what would be the result of any experiment.
One frequently discussed what one called ideal experiments. Such experiments
were designed to answer a very critical question irrespective of whether or not
they could actually be carried out. Of course it was important that it should be
possible in principle to carry out the experiment, but the technique might be
extremely complicated. These ideal experiments could be very useful in
clarifying certain problems. If there was no agreement among the physicists
about the result of such an ideal experiment, it was frequently possible to find
a similar but simpler experiment that could be carried out, so that the
experimental answer contributed essentially to the clarification of quantum
theory.
The strangest experience of those years was that the paradoxes of quantum theory
did not disappear during this process of clarification; on the contrary, they
became even more marked and more exciting. There was, for instance, the
experiment of Compton on the scattering of X-rays. From earlier experiments on
the interference of scattered light there could be no doubt that scattering
takes place essentially in the following way: The incident light wave makes an
electron in the beam vibrate in the frequency of the wave; the oscillating
electron then emits a spherical wave with the same frequency and thereby
produces the scattered light. However, Compton found in 1923 that the frequency
of scattered X-rays was different from the frequency of the incident X-ray. This
change of frequency could be formally understood by assuming that scattering is
to be described as collision of a light quantum with an electron. The energy of
the light quantum is changed during the collision; and since the frequency times
Planck's constant should be the energy of the light quantum, the frequency also
should be changed. But what happens in this interpretation of the light wave?
The two experiments - one on the interference of scattered light and the other
on the change of frequency of the scattered light - seemed to contradict each
other without any possibility of compromise.
By this time many physicists were convinced that these apparent contradictions
belonged to the intrinsic structure of atomic physics. Therefore, in I924 de
Broglie in France tried to extend the dualism between wave description and
particle description to the elementary particles of matter, primarily to the
electrons. He showed that a certain matter wave could 'correspond' to a moving
electron, just as a light wave corresponds: to a moving light quantum. It was
not clear at the time what the word 'correspond' meant in this connection. But
de Broglie suggested that the quantum condition in Bohr's theory should be
interpreted as a statement about the matter waves. A wave circling around a
nucleus can for geometrical reasons only be a stationary wave; and the perimeter
of the orbit must be an integer multiple of the wave length. In this way de
Broglie's idea connected the quantum condition. which always had been a foreign
element in the mechanics of the electrons, with the dualism between waves and
particles.
In Bohr's theory the discrepancy between the calculated orbital frequency of the
electrons and the frequency of the emitted radiation had to be interpreted as a
limitation to the concept of the electronic orbit. This concept had been
somewhat doubtful from the beginning. For the higher orbits, however, the
electrons should move at a large distance from the nucleus just as they do when
one sees them moving through a cloud chamber. There one should speak about
electronic orbits. It was therefore very satisfactory that for these higher
orbits the frequencies of the emitted radiation approach the orbital frequency
and its higher harmonics. Also Bohr had already suggested in his early papers
that the intensities of the emitted spectral lines approach the intensities of
the corresponding harmonics. This principle of correspondence had proved very
useful for the approximative calculation of the intensities of spectral lines.
In this way one had the impression that Bohr's theory gave a qualitative but not
a quantitative description of what happens inside the atom; that some new
feature of the behaviour of matter was qualitatively expressed by the quantum
conditions, which in turn were connected with the dualism between waves and
particles.
The precise mathematical formulation of quantum theory finally emerged from two
different developments. The one started from Bohr's principle of correspondence.
One had to give up the concept of the electronic orbit, but still had to
maintain it in the limit of high quantum numbers, i.e., for the large orbits.
In this latter case the emitted radiation, by means of its frequencies and
intensities, gives a picture of the electronic orbit; it represents what the
mathematicians call a Fourier expansion of the orbit. The idea suggested itself
that one should write down the mechanical laws not as equations for the
positions and velocities of the electrons but as equations for the frequencies
and amplitudes of their Fourier expansion. Starting from such equations and
changing them very little one could hope to come to relations for those
quantities which correspond to the frequencies and intensities of the emitted
radiation, even for the small orbits and the ground state of the atom. This plan
could actually be carried out; in the summer of 1925 it led to a mathematical
formalism called matrix mechanics or, more generally, quantum mechanics. The
equations of motion in Newtonian mechanics were replaced by similar equations
between matrices; it was a strange experience to find that many of the old
results of Newtonian mechanics, like conservation of energy, etc., could be
derived also in the new scheme. Later the investigations of Born, Jordan and
Dirac showed that the matrices representing position and momentum of the
electron did not commute. This latter fact demonstrated clearly the essential
difference between quantum mechanics and classical mechanics.
The other development followed de Broglie's idea of matter waves. Schrödinger
tried to set up a wave equation for de Broglie's stationary waves around the
nucleus. Early in 1926 he succeeded in deriving the energy values of the
stationary states of the hydrogen atom as 'Eigenvalues' of his wave equation and
could give a more general prescription for transforming a given set of classical
equations of motion into a corresponding wave equation in a space of many
dimensions. Later he was able to prove that his formalism of wave mechanics was
mathematically equivalent to the earlier formalism of quantum mechanics.
Thus one finally had a consistent mathematical formalism, which could be defined
in two equivalent ways starting either from relations between matrices or from
wave equations. This formalism gave the correct energy values for the hydrogen
atom: it took less than one year to show that it was also successful for the
helium atom and the more complicated problems of the heavier atoms. But in what
sense did the new formalism describe the atom? The paradoxes of the dualism
between wave picture and particle picture were not solved; they were hidden
somehow in the mathematical scheme.
A first and very interesting step toward a real understanding Of quantum theory
was taken by Bohr, Kramers and Slater in 1924. These authors tried to solve the
apparent contradiction between the wave picture and the particle picture by the
concept of the probability wave. The electromagnetic waves were interpreted not
as 'real' waves but as probability waves, the intensity of which determines in
every point the probability for the absorption (or induced emission) of a light
quantum by an atom at this point. This idea led to the conclusion that the laws
of conservation of energy and momentum need not be true for the single event,
that they are only statistical laws and are true only in the statistical
average. This conclusion was not correct, however, and the connections between
the wave aspect and the particle aspect of radiation were still more
complicated.
But the paper of Bohr, Kramers and Slater revealed one essential feature of the
correct interpretation of quantum theory. This concept of the probability wave
was something entirely new in theoretical physics since Newton. Probability in
mathematics or in statistical mechanics means a statement about our degree of
knowledge of the actual situation. In throwing dice we do not know the fine
details of the motion of our hands which determine the fall of the dice and
therefore we say that the probability for throwing a special number is just one
in six. The probability wave of Bohr, Kramers, Slater, however, meant more than
that; it meant a tendency for something. It was a quantitative version of the
old concept of 'potentia' in Aristotelian philosophy. It introduced something
standing in the middle between the idea of an event and the actual event, a~~
strange kind of physical reality just in the middle between possibility and
reality. r Later when the mathematical framework of quantum theory was fixed,
Born took up this idea of the probability wave and gave a clear definition of
the mathematical quantity in the formalism. which was to be interpreted as the
probability wave. It X as not a three-dimensional wave like elastic or radio
waves, but a wave in the many-dimensional configuration space, and therefore a
rather abstract mathematical quantity.
Even at this time, in the summer of I926, it was not clear in every case how the
mathematical formalism should be used to describe a given experimental
situation. One knew how to describe the stationary states of an atom, but one
did not know how to describe a much simpler event - as for instance an electron
moving through a cloud chamber.
When Schrödinger in that summer had shown that his formalism of wave mechanics
was mathematically equivalent to quantum mechanics he tried for some time to
abandon the idea of quanta and 'quantum jumps' altogether and to replace the
electrons in the atoms simply by his three-dimensional matter waves. He was
inspired to this attempt by his result, that the energy levels of the hydrogen
atom in his theory seemed to be simply the eigenfrequencies of the stationary
matter waves. Therefore, he thought it was a mistake to call them energies: they
were just frequencies. But in the discussions which took place in the autumn of
I926 in Copenhagen between Bohr and Schrödinger and the Copenhagen group of
physicists it soon became apparent that such an interpretation would not even be
sufficient to explain Planck's formula of heat radiation.
During the months following these discussions an intensive study of all
questions concerning the interpretation of quantum theory in Copenhagen finally
led to a complete and, as many physicists believe, satisfactory clarification of
the situation. But it was not a solution which one could easily accept. I
remember discussions with Bohr which went through many hours till very late at
night and ended almost in despair; and when at the end of the discussion I went
alone for a walk in the neighbouring park I repeated to myself again and again
the question: Can nature possibly be as absurd as it seemed to us in these
atomic experiments?
The final solution was approached in two different ways. The one was a turning
around of the question. Instead of asking: How can one in the known mathematical
scheme express a given experimental situation? the other question was put: Is it
true, perhaps, that only such experimental situations can arise in nature as can
be expressed in the mathematical formalism? The assumption that this was
actually true led to limitations in the use of those concepts that had been the
basis of classical physics since Newton. One could speak of the position and of
the velocity of an electron as in Newtonian mechanics and one could observe and
measure these quantities. But one could not fix both quantities simultaneously
with an arbitrarily high accuracy. Actually the product of these two
inaccuracies turned out to be not less than Planck's constant divided by the
mass of the particle. Similar relations could be formulated for other
experimental situations. They are usually called relations of uncertainty or
principle of indeterminacy. One had learned that the old concepts fit nature
only inaccurately.
lie other way of approach was Bohr's concept of complementarity. Schrödinger had
described the atom as a system not of a nucleus and electrons but of a nucleus
and matter waves. This picture of the matter waves certainly also contained an
element of truth. Bohr considered the two pictures - particle picture and wave
picture - as two complementary descriptions of the same reality. Any of these
descriptions can be only partially true, there must be limitations to the use of
the particle concept as well as of wave concept, else one could not avoid
contradictions. If one takes into account those limitations which can be
expressed by the uncertainty relations, the contradictions disappear.
In this way since the spring of I927 one has had a consistent interpretation of
quantum theory, which is frequently called the 'Copenhagen interpretation'. This
interpretation received its crucial test in the autumn of 1927 at the Solvay
conference in Brussels. Those experiments which had always led to the worst
paradoxes were again and again discussed in all details, especially by Einstein.
New ideal experiments were invented to trace any possible inconsistency of the
theory, but the theory was shown to be consistent and seemed to fit the
experiments as far as one could see.
The details of this Copenhagen interpretation will be the subject of the next
chapter. It should be emphasised at this point that it has taken more than a
quarter of a century to get from the first idea of the existence of energy
quanta to a real understanding of the quantum theoretical laws. This indicates
the great change that had to take place in the fundamental concepts concerning
reality before one could understand the new situation.
Further Reading:
Biography | Heisenberg on Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory |
Heisenberg on Philosophical Ideas Since Descartes
Philosophy Archive @ marxists.org
The
Value of Psychotic Experience
By Alan Watts
I think most of you know from the announcement of this series of seminars
and workshops during the summer, they're entitled 'The Value of Psychotic
Experience.' And many people who are interested in an entirely new
approach to problems of what have hitherto been called mental health are
participating in these seminars and workshops, and doing something which
is extremely dangerous and in a way revolutionary.
For this reason: We are living in a world where deviant opinions about
religion are no longer dangerous, because no one takes religion seriously,
and therefore you can be like Bishop Pike and question the doctrine of the
Holy Trinity, the reality of the virgin birth, and the physical
ressurection of Jesus, and still remain a bishop in good standing. But
what you can't get away with today, or at least you have great difficulty
in getting away with is psychiatric heresy.
Because psychiatry is taken seriously, and indeed, I would like to draw a
parallel between today and the Middle Ages in the respect of this whole
question.
When we go back to the days of the Spanish Inquisition, we must remember
that the professor of theology at the University of Seville has the same
kind of social prestige and intellectual standing that today would be
enjoyed by the professor of pathology at Stanford Medical School. And you
must bear in mind that this theologan, like the professor of pathology
today, is a man of good will.
Intensely interested in human welfare. He didn't merely opine; that
professor of theology KNEW that anybody who had heretical religious views
would suffer everlasting agony of the most apalling kind. And some of you
should read the imaginative descriptions of the sufferings of Hell,
written not only in the Middle Ages, but in quite recent times by men of
intense intellectual acumen. And therefore out of real merciful
motivation, the Inquisitors thought that it was the best thing they could
do to torture heresy out of those who held it.
Worse still, heresy was infectious, and would contaminate other people and
put them in this immortal danger. And so with the best motivations
imaginable, the used the thumbscrew, the rack, the iron maiden, the leaded
cat-of-nine-tails, and finally the stake to get these people to come to
their senses, because nothing else seemed to be available.
Today, serious heresy, and rather peculiarly in the United States, is a
deviant state of consciousness. Not so much deviant opinions as having a
kind of experience which is different from 'regular' experience. And as
Ronald Lang, who is going to participate in this series, has so well
pointed out, we are taught what experiences are permissable in the same
way we are taught what gestures, what manners, what behavior is
permissable and socially acceptable. And therefore, if a person has
so-called 'strange' experiences, and endeavors to communicate these
experiences--because naturally one talks about what one feels--and
endeavors to communicate these experiences to other people, he is looked
at in a very odd way and asked 'are you feeling all right?' Because people
feel distinctly uncomfortable when the realize they are in the presence of
someone who is experiencing the world in a rather different way from
themselves.
They call in question as to whether this person is indeed human. They look
like a human being, but because the state of experience is so different,
you wonder whether they really are. And you get the kind of--the same kind
of queasy feeling inside as you would get if, for the sake of example, you
were to encounter a very beautiful girl, very formally dressed, and you
were introduced, and in order to shake hands, she removed her glove, and
you found in your hand the claw of a large bird. That would be spooky,
wouldn't it?
Or let's suppose that you were looking at a rose. And you looked down in
the middle where the petals are closed, and you suddenly saw them open
like lips, and the rose addressed you and said 'good morning.' You would
feel something uncanny was going on. And in rather the same way, in an
every day kind of circumstance, when you are sitting in a bar drinking,
and you find you have a drunk next to you. And he tells you,
'undistinguishable drunken ranting' and you sort of move your stool a
little ways away from this man, because he's become in some way what we
mean by nonhuman. Now, we understand the drunk; we know what's the matter
with him, and it'll wear off. But when quite unaccountably, a person gives
representation that he's suddenly got the feeling that he's living in
backwards time, or that everybody seems to be separated from him by a huge
sheet of glass. Or that he's suddenly seeing everything in unbelievably
detailed moving colors.
We say, 'well that's not normal. Therefore there must be something wrong
with you.' And the fact that we have such an enormous percentage of the
population of this country in mental institutions is a thing we may have
to look at from a very different point of view, not that there may be a
high incidence of mental sickness, but that there may be a high incidence
of intolerance of variations of consciousness.
Now in Arabic countries, where the Islamic religion prevails, a person
whom we would define as mentally deranged is regarded with a certain
respect. The village idiot is looked upon with reverence because it is
said his soul is not with his body, it is with Allah. And because his soul
is with Allah, you must respect this body and care for it, not as
something that is to be sort of swept away and put out of sight, but as
something of a reminder that a man can still be living on Earth while his
soul is in Heaven. Very diffent point of view. Also in India, there is a
certain difference in attitude to people who would be called nuts, because
there is a poem--an ancient poem of the Hindus-- which says 'sometimes
naked, sometimes mad, now's a scholar, now's a fool, thus they appear on
Earth as free men.'
But you see, we in our attitude to this sort of behavior, which is
essentially in its first inception harmless, these people are talking what
we regard to be nonsense. And to be experienced in nonsense. We feel
threatened by that, because we are not secure in ourselves. A very secure
person can adapt himself with amazing speed to different kinds of
communciation. In foreign countries, for example, where you don't speak
the language of the people you are staying with, if you don't feel ashamed
of this, you can set up an enormous degree of communication with other
people through gesture and even something most surprising, people can
communicate with each other by simply talking. You can get a lot across to
people by talking intelligent nonsense, by, as it were, imitating a
foreign language; speaking like it sounds.
You can communicate feeligns, emotions, like and dislike of this, that and
the other; very simply. But if you are rigid and are not willing to do
this type of playing, then you feel threatened by anybody who communicates
with you in a funny way. And so this rigidity sets up a kind of vicious
circle.
The minute, in other words, someone makes an unusual communciation to you
about an unusual state of consciousness, and you back off, the individual
wonders 'is there something wrong with me? I don't seem to be understood
by anyone.' Or he may wonder 'what's going on? Has everybody else suddenly
gone crazy?' And then if he feels that he gets frightened, and to the
degree that he gets more frightened, he gets more defensive, and
eventually land up with being catatonic, which is a person who simply
doesn't move. And so then what we do is we whiffle him off to an
institution, where he is captured by the inquisitors. This is a very
special priesthood. And they have all the special marks that priesthoods
have always had. They have a special vestment. Like the Catholic priest at
mass wears a *, the mental doctor, like every physician, wears a long
white coat, and may carry something that corresponds, shall we say, so a
stole, which is a stethescope around his neck. He will then, under his
authority, which is often in total defience of every conceivable civil
liberty, will incarcerate this incomprehensible person, and as Lang has
pointed out, he undergoes a ritual of dehumanization. And he's put away.
And because the hospitals are so crowded with people of this kind, he's
going to get very little attention. And it's very difficult to know, when
you get attention, how to work with it.
You get into this Kafka-esque situation which you get, say, in the state
of California, if you are sent to such an institute as Vacaville prison,
which is as you drive on the highway from San Francisco to Sacramento, you
will encounter Vacaville about halfway between.
You will see a great sign which will say 'California State Medical
Facility.' The state of California is famous for circumlocution. When you
go underneath a low bridge, instead of saying 'Low Bridge,' it says
'Impaired Vertical Clearance.' Or when you're going to cross a toll
bridge, instead of saying, plainly, 'Toll Bridge,' it says 'Entering
Vehicular Crossing.' And when it should be saying, plainly, 'Prison,' it
says either 'California State Medical Facility,' or 'California State
Correctional Facility,' as it does as Soledad. Now Vacaville is a place
where people get sent on what they call a one- to ten-year sentence. And
there is a supervising psychiatric medical sort of social service staff
there, who examine the inmates once in a while because they have such a
large number. It's a maximum security prison, much more ringed around with
defences than even San Quentin. I went there to lecture to the inmates
some time ago. They wanted someone to talk to them about meditation and
yoga, and one of the inmates took me aside--a very clean-cut all-American
boy. And he had been put in there probably for smoking pot; I'm not
absolutely sure in my memory what the offense was. He said 'You know, I am
very puzzled about this place. I really want to go straight and get out
and get a job and live like an ordinary person.' He said 'I think they
don't know how to go about it. I've just been refused release; I went up
before the committee; I talked to them. But I don't know what the rules of
the game are. And incidentally, the members of the committee don't
either.'
So we have these situation, you see, of confusion. So that when a person
goes into a mental hospital and feels first of all perhaps that he should
try to sort himself out and talk reasonably with the physician. There is
introduced into the communications system between them a fundamental
element of fear and mistrust. Because I could talk to any individual if I
were malicious and interpret every sane remark you make as something
deeply sinister; that would simply exhibit my own paranoia. And the
psychiatrist can very easily get paranoid, because the system he is asked
to represent, officially is paranoid. I talked with a psychiatrist in
England just a few weeks ago. One of the most charming women I've come
across, an older woman, very intelligent, quite beautiful, very
reasonable. And she was discussing with me the problem of the LSD
psychosis. I asked her what sort of treatments they were using, and all
sorts of questions about that, and she appeared at first to be a little on
the defensive about it. We got onto the subject of the experience of what
is officially called 'depersonalization,' where you feel that you and your
experience--your sensory experience--that is to say all that you do
experience: the people, the things, the animals, the buildings around
you--that it's all one. I said 'do you call this a hallucination? After
all,' I said, 'it fits the facts of science, of biophysics, of ecology, of
biology, and much better than our ordinary normal experience fits it.' She
said 'that's not my problem.' She said 'that may be true, but I am
employed by a society which feels that it ought to maintain a certain
average kind of normal experience, and my job is to restore people to what
society considers normal consciousness. I have no alternative but to leave
it at that.'
So, then. When someone is introduced into this situation, and it's very
difficult to get attention, you feel terrified. The mental hospital, often
in its very architecture, suggests some of the great visions of madness,
of-- You know that feeling of-- The corridors of the mind. If you got lost
in a maze and you couldn't get back. You're not quite sure who you are, or
whether your father and mother are your real father and mother, or whether
in the next ten minutes you're still going to remember how to speak
English. You feel very lost. And the mental hospital in its architecture
and everything represents that situation.
Endless corridors, all the same.
Which one are you in? Where are you? Will you ever get out?
And it goes on monotonously, day after day after day after day after day.
And someone who talks to you occasionally doesn't have a straight look in
his eye. He doesn't see you as quite human. He looks at you as if you're
weird. What are you to do?
The best thing to do is get violent, if you really want to get out. Well
then they say that's proof that you're crazy. And then as you get more
violent, they put you off by yourself, and the only alternative you have,
the only way of expressing yourself is to throw shit at the walls. Then
they say, 'well, that's conclusive. The person isn't human.'
Well, the question has been raised a great deal in the last few days on
the television, as to whether this is a sick society. And I have listened
to a perfectly beautiful pschoanalyst with a thick German accent. Oh,
marvelous things! 'Eet ees quite obvious dat society is quite hopeless,
you zee.'
And I have listened to four red-blooded Americans saying 'most people in
this society are good people, and it's a GOOD society, but we have a very
sick minority.'
Now, what I want to do in--certainly this first part of the seminar--is to
call in question, very fundamentally, all of our basic ideas about what is
sickness, what is health, what is sanity, what is insanity. Because I
think we have to begin from this position of humility; that we really
don't know. It's reported that shortly before he died, Robert Oppenheimer,
looking at the picture of technology, especially nuclear technology, said
'I'm afraid it's perfectly obvious that the world is going to hell.' It's
going to destroy itself, it's on collision course. The only way in which
it might not go to hell is that we do not try to prevent it from doing so.
Think that one over.
Because it can well be argued that the major troublemakers in the world
today are those people with good intentions. Like the professor of
theology, University of Seville, professor of psychiatry at wherever you
will. The idea that we know who is sick, who is wrong.
Now, we are living in a political situation right now where a most
fantastic thing is occuring. Everybody knows what they're against; nobody
knows what they're for. Because nobody is thinking in terms anymore of
what would be a great style of life.
The reason we have poverty is that we have no imagination.
There's no earthly reason; there's no physical, technical reason for there
being any poverty at all anywhere.
But you see, there are a great many people accumulating what they think is
vast wealth, but it's only money. They don't know how to use it, they
don't know how to enjoy it, because they have no imagination.
I'm announcing not the date, but the intention of conducting a seminar for
extremely rich people entitled 'Are You Rich and Miserable?' because you
very probably are. Some aren't, but most are. Now the thing is that we are
living in this situation where everybody knows what they're against, even
if they say 'I'm against the war in Vietnam. I am against discrimination
against colored people, or against any different race than the discolored
race,' and so on.
Yeah, so what? But it's not enough to feel like that; that's nothing. You
must have some completely concrete vision of what you would like, and
therefore I'm making a serious proposition that everybody who goes into
college should as an entrance examination have the task of writing an
essay on his idea of heaven, in which he is asked to be absolutely
specific. He is not allowed, for example, to say 'I would like to have a
very beautiful girl to live with.' What do you mean by a beautiful girl?
Exactly how, and in what way? Specifically. You know, down to the last
wiggle of the hips, and down to every kind of expression of character and
socialbility and her interests and all. Be specific! And about everything
like that. 'I would like a beautiful house to live in.' Just what exactly
do you mean by a beautiful house?
Well you've suddenly got to study architecture. You see, and finally, this
preliminary essay on 'My Idea of Heaven' turns into his doctoral
dissertation.
So in a situation where we all know what we're against, and we don't know
what we're for, then we know WHO we're against. We're defining all sorts
of people as nonhuman. We say they're totally irrational. They're totally
stupid.
People will say, 'oh, those niggers, they're completely uneducated,
they'll never learn a thing, there's nothing you can do about it, they're
hopeless, get rid of them.' The Birchers are saying the same sort of
thing. Other people, the liberals are saying the same thing about the
Birchers. 'They're stupid, get rid of them.' The only result, then, the
only thing anybody can think of in this sort of situation is 'get your
gun.' And this sets up a vicious circle, because everybody else gets his
gun. And the point from which we have to begin, then, is that we don't
know who is healthy and who is sick.
Who is right and who is wrong.
And furthermore, we have to start, I think, from the assumption that
because we don't know, there isn't anything we can do about it.
There's a Turkish proverb that I like to quote: 'He who sleeps on the
floor cannot fall out of bed.' Therefore, we should make it a beginning--a
basic assumption about life that even supposing you could improve society,
and you could improve yourself, you were never sure that the direction you
moved it in would be an improvement.
A Chinese story, kind of a Taoistic story about a farmer. One day, his
horse ran away, and all the neighbors gathered in the evening and said
'that's too bad.' He said 'maybe.' Next day, the horse came back and
brought with it seven wild horses. 'Wow!' they said, 'Aren't you lucky!'
He said 'maybe.' He next day, his son grappled with one of these wild
horses and tried to break it in, and he got thrown and broke his leg. And
all the neighbors said 'oh, that's too bad that your son broke his leg.'
He said, 'maybe.' The next day, the conscription officers came around,
gathering young men for the army, and they rejected his son because he had
a broken leg. And the visitors all came around and said 'Isn't that great!
Your son got out.' He said, 'maybe.'
You see, you never really know in which direction progress lies. And this
is today a fantastic problem for geneticists.
They genetecists, you know, because they think they are within some degree
of controlling the DNA and RNA code, believe that it is really possible
perhaps to breed the kind of human beings that we ought to have. And they
say 'hooray!' But they think one moment and they think 'ah-ah-ah-ah-ah,
but what kind of human being?' So they're very worried. And just a little
while ago, a national committee of graduate students and geneticists had a
meeting at the University of California and the asked a group of
psychologists, theologans and philosophers to come and reason with them
about this and give them some insight. And I was included. That means that
they are REALLY desperate. So I said 'I'll tell you what, the only thing
you can do is to be quite sure that you keep a vast variety of different
kinds of human beings, because you never know what's going to happen next.
And therefore we need an enormous, shall I say, varied battery of
different kinds of human intelligence and resources and abilities.
So that there will always be some kind of person available for any
emergency that might turn up. So you see, there's a total fallacy in the
idea of preaching to people. This is why I abandoned the ministries, I've
often said, not because the church didn't practice what it preached, but
because it preached. Because you cannot tell people what sort of pattern
of life they ought to have, because if they followed your advice, you
might have a breed of monsters. Look at it from the point of view that the
human race is a breed of monsters.
I was thinking about it this afternoon, driving down from Monterey to
here, and looking at the freeways, and all these little cars going along
them, and I was wondering if I considered that the planet was a physical
body like my own, whether I might not feel that this was some sort of an
invasion of weird bacteria that were eating me up. Whether it may be that
the birds and the bees and the flowers--animals in general--were a kind of
healthy bacteria. You know, bees and birds sort of wander about, generally
mix in with the forest and the fields and carry on a rather disorganized
but very interesting pattern of life, whereas human beings cut straight
lines across everything. Railways. They cover themselves with junk. A bird
may have a little nest, but it doesn't have to surround itself with
automobiles and books and buildings and phonograph records and
universities and clutter up the whole landscape with a lot of bric-
a-brac. Human beings pride themselves on this. 'You see, this is culture!'
This is a great achievement. Build a building, you know? It's all you can
get money for. You can't get money for professors, but you can get them
for new buildings. So we cover the Earth with clutter. And so the Earth
might feel as if we might feel if suddenly we got a disease which instead
of leaving us soft-skinned, covered us with crystalline scabs, and this
would be proliferating all over the place--a pox!
Are we a pox on the planet?
Don't be too sure that we're not.
Consider simply this: There is a good argument--keep in mind I'm saying
these things to provoke you, to make you a little insane by being in doubt
of all the assumptions which you think are firmly true. It is quite
possible, you see, that the whole enterprise of man to control events on
the Earth by his conscious intelligence, by his language, by his
mathematics, and by his science is a disaster. We say look at his
successes, look how much disease we have cured. Look how much hunger has
been abolished. Look how we have raised the standard of living. Yeah. But
in how long a time?
Well, even if we say this started with the dawn of known history, it's a
tiny little fragment of time, as compared with the time in which the human
species has existed. And if it's the Industrial Revolution, it narrows
down to the teenieest, weeniest little bit of time. How do we know this is
progress? How do we know that this is a success?
It may be a disaster of unimaginable proportions. It may be. But the truth
is, we don't know. Of course, it could be possible, that every star in the
heavens was once a planet, and that planet developed intelligent life,
which in due course discovered the secrets of atomic energy, blew itself
up into a chain reaction, and as it exploded throughout various masses
which began in due course to spin around it, became planets, and after a
while developed intelligent life.
After millions of years, as the central star started to cool off, they
blew themselves up in turn, and that's the way the thing goes on. That's
of course the theory of the Hindus. Not literally, but they do have the
theory, you see, that life, every manifestation of the universe, begins in
a glorious way, and then it deteriorates. But then everything does.
Isn't everything always falling apart and getting older and fading out?
Why shouldn't various species, why shouldn't various planets, why
shouldn't various universes be going through the same course?
You see, that's a totally upside-down view in respect to our common sense.
We think everything ought to be growing and improving and getting better
and better and better and better and better and better. Look at it the
other way around, it might be quite different. Then there's another
thought. We know that the truth, the way theing are is an interaction, or
better, transaction between the physical world and our sense organs, and
that therefore, what we know as existence is a relationship. It is the way
certain what we will call for the moment electrical vibrations make
impression upon sense organs of a certain structure. Now that's a limited
way of talking about it, but it will do for the moment.
Therefore, according to the structure of the sense organs, the vibrations
will appear of be manifested in different ways. In other words, I can move
my finger like this, and if it happens to pluck the string of a violin, it
will go 'plunk!' In which case my finger and its motion will be manifested
as 'plunk!' But if it should so happen that I should strike the string of
a bass fiddle, it will go, 'bunggggg' and so the finger will be 'bunggggg'
But if the same motion should strike the skin of a drum, 'thunk,' so the
finger will be 'thunk,' now what is that motion truly? It's whatever it
interacts with. If it goes across somebody elses skin, it'll be something
I can't make a noise about. It'd be a feeling. If it does it in front of
an eye, it will be a motion.
So depending on the structure of shall we say for the moment the receptor
organs, so will the reality be. Now behind the receptor organs--the senses
are not at all simple--behind the senses they are inseperable from an
extraordinarily complex neurological structure. And not only that, but a
system of cultural standards as to what events are to be noticed and what
events are to be ignored. What is important for a certain reason such as
survival, and what is unimportant, and therefore we further modify the
selectivity of the sense organs and of the nervous system as a whole with
a selective system of what is culturally accepted as real or unreal,
important or unimportant.
So we end up you see, with the possibility that so complex a selective
system may have a great many variations, and that people that we call
crazy have a different system of evaluation. They may have a difference of
neural structure, as would obviously be the case if there were lesions
caused by syphillis, or by brain tumors. But what about something not
quite at that level, but at the level of the selectivities they imply
which would correspond to what I call social conditioning. Now we know the
proverb that genius is to madness 'cross the line. And how do we know
whether a certain modification in the structure of the whole sensory
system is a sickness or whether it is a growning edge--some kind of
improvement in the human being. Well we have certain very, very rough
standards which we apply to this, but we can never be quite sure because
what we call sanity is mob rule.
Sanity is simply the vote or organisms that recognize themselves to be
humans and they get together and say 'Well, the way we see it is the way
it is.'
And you will remember in Kipling's story in the 'Jungle Book' called
'Cause Hunting' how the monkeys, the bandiloot are laughed at because
every once in a while they get together in a meeting and shout 'We all say
so, so it must be true!'
But herein you see lie the deepest political problems. How is the majority
to tolerate, to absorb, to evaluate a minority? It's an academic problem.
We have standards as to who are sound scholars, reliable scientists--we
give them a PhD. And they all get together and uphold the standards. But
then they suddenly realize that they're getting a little narrow and that
things aren't going on, and suddenly somebody says one day 'Old so-and-so,
who we always thought was quite mad and very, very unorthodox has suddenly
come up with an idea that we've all got to think about.' So one would say
that every university faculty has to include in its membership at least
five percent screwballs.
Every culture has to tolerate within its domain a lot of weird people. Now
there's no possibility that everybody in the United States is going to be
a hippie. But the fact that a large number of young people are hippies
should be a matter of congratulations, even if you don't want to live that
way yourself. Not to mention the various racial variations that we have
among us: negroes, Mexicans, Chinese, Japanese, and so forth.
All this is exceedingly important, because as I said to the geneticists,
this preserves variety. And a culture which is insecure in itself--I'm
getting back to a sort of starting point--cannot tolerate this.
Now in England as I remember it, they were much more secure. When I was a
boy, 15 years old, in a very orthodox Church of England school, I
announced that I was a Buddhist. Nobody turned a hair. Here, if somebody
announces that he's something strange, they have to go before the
principal, and there's a big problem, and the FBI is brought in, and this,
that, and the other. But they said 'Jolly wot, the man's a buhddist!' And
positively encouraged me in my deviant interest, and gave me the first
prize in the divinity class. Now exactly the same kind of relaxed attitude
is necessary here.
Let's ask a few questions that don't need answers. Is the American family
such a drag that a few kids living in free-love communes are a fundamental
threat to it and will pervert all our nice boys and girls to live that
way? Are American universities so boring that a few students who drop out
and form their own univerisities are a threat to the total system and will
pervert all the other nice children in there? Are a few kids going around
in elegant beards and long hair going to turn all our boys into weirdos?
Say, I had a funny experience. When I was in England I attended services
at Westminster Abbey. I took my wife there because I really wanted to her
to see this thing, because it's the heart and soul of British
establishment. The dean of Westminster is like the Dali Lama almost. They
had this very elegant victorian service--beautiful vestments, choir and
everything--and as they were coming out in procession, the choir came
first, which were little boys with proper haircuts and surplices.?A and
red caps on, there were a number of older boys wearing surplices--the
special kind of surplice that is worn by its color of a British public
school. Y'know, the public schools are not public schools, they're very
private schools, very exclusive schools, and the school of Westminster is
one of the top, like Eaton or Harrow. Suddenly, these boys in surplices
turn up, with these enormous Beatles haircuts whishing all over the place.
I couldn't believe my eyes, because I used to be a King's Scholar, and in
our day, we were very proper and all wore mortarboards over short hair.
And then behind these surpliced boys, there were the commoners of the
school, who were not King's Scholars and therefore didn't wear surplices,
but wore striped black pants, black coats, wing collars and black ties.
And we always used to walk in procession as we came out, like this, but
here were these boys with a similar hairdo coming out. .apparent visual
joke here that I guess you'd have to be there to get, but very funny, it
would seemA My god, what's going on? This is Westminster Abbey! But the
dean of Westminster doesn't turn a hair, he takes it all in stride. He's
perfectly secure. He knows he is who he is. He knows it's ordained by
Jesus Christ and everything else and it's all right, and if you want to
come in and do something different, it's all right. And that is the
attitude we have to have in regard to everything deviant, psychotic, and
weird.
Because we are not sure what's right, who's sane, which end is up. In a
relativistic universe, you don't cling to anything, you learn to swim. And
you know what swimming is. It's a kind of relaxed attitude to the water,
in which you don't keep yourself afloat by holding the water, but by a
certain giving to it, and it's just the same with relationships to people
all around.
ALAN WATTS: THE VALUE OF PSYCHOTIC EXPERIENCE, PART 2
Zen has attracted attention over the years, since 1927, when Dr. Daisetz
Suzuki first published his essays in Zen Buddhism, and he had a very odd
fascination with Westerners. To begin with, very many intelligent Western
people were becoming--had already become, dissatisfied with the standard
brands of their own religions, and this dissatisfaction had of course
begun to take place quite seriously towards the close of the 19th century,
and at that time, we began to be exposed to Oriental philosophy or
religion, whatever you want to call it, because the great scholars like
Maxmilla, Riese DavidsÙ and so on were translating the texts of Buddhism
and Hinduism. And already in 1848, the Jesuit had translated the Tao Te
Ching, the Taoist texts from China into French, and translations into
English then became available
What happened was rather curious, because we were receiving Oriental
tradition on a far higher level of sophistication than we were receiving
the Christian or the Jewish traditions. The average person was exposed to
an extremely low level of Christianity, and therefore immediately compared
this to the highest level of Hinduism and Buddhism, much to the detriment
of the former, because you could no go into your parish church, even if
you lived in a very good neighborhood, even in a university neighborhood
and find Meister Eckhart for sale on the entrance table. Nor even would
you find some Thomas Aquinas. You found wretched little tracts. And so the
comparison was overwheming. It wasn't really fair for the Christian
tradition, but that's what happened. Then something else happened, which
was that in the year 1875, a strange Russian woman by the name of H.P.
Blavatsky founded the Theosophical Society, whose doctrines and literature
were a fantastic hodgepodge of the Western occult tradition, a great deal
of Hindu and Buddhist lore, a smattering of Tibetan Buddhism and Chinese
Buddhism, but it all was very romantic, and presuppose that the adepts of
Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and so forth were very high order initiates.
Supermen.
The masters. And they had their secret lodges in the vastness of the
Himalayas, and even such places as the Andes, and they were rather
inaccessable, because they were in possession of the most dangerous
secrets of occult power. But they every now and then felt safe to send an
emissary out into the world to teach the ancient doctrine of liberation to
mankind.
And so the West, through this, got an extremely glamorous impression of
what Oriental wisdom might be. And I remember the media in which I found
myself involved in England when Dr. Suzuki first came around was
essentially theosophical in its oreintation. They expected Dr Suzuki to be
a master in that sense, in that theosophical sense, or if not quite that,
then at least in touch with those who were. And the whole idea of the Zen
master, the way the whole word 'master' got attached to a teacher of Zen
carried with it this theosophical flavor, and also a certain flavor which
the Theosophical Society picked up from India where the great guru is
somebody enormously revered. People would travel for hundreds of miles
just to look at him, to have what is called Tao-Shan, or 'view' of
someone like Shri Arabindo or Shri Ramana Maharshi or the current
Maharshi, or it would be Shri Rama Krishna or Amandani, who's a lady guru,
and there's always the feeling that these people have tremendous powers.
And so this is what was expected by many people from Zen masters.
But the interesting thing about Zen masters is they're not like that.
They're very human. And they wouldn't deign to perform a miracle. I got to
know about Zen masters through my first wife, because when whe was an
adolescent about 14 years old, she went to Japan, and they lived close to
the great monastary of Nonzengi where the master in charge was a very
brilliant master by the name of Nonshinkan. He was an old man, and he
was-- The man who is appointed to be the roshi or the teacher of Nonzengi
of Kyoto was always considered to be just about tops of the whole bunch.
We've had the present master, Shibayama Roshi visiting the United States
recently. And he used to sit around with her and he'd get a catalog of all
the famous sumo wrestlers, who were enormously fat. They have to eat, eat,
eat, eat, eat, eat rice, because the whole art depends on their weight.
But they're very handsome.
And he used to thumb them through sitting next to this little girl and
pick out husbands for her. And then he would have nose-picking contests
with her. Y'know, they weren't exactly real, but they'd make sort of like
picking their noses and flicking the snots at each other. So you mustn't
expect the Zen master to be like the Pope. They can come on very dignified
when necessary, but there's always something about them which is
fundamentally lacking in seriousness. Even though they may be well-endowed
with sincerety. They're two quite different qualities. They are
extraordinarily interesting people, as are their students, in the context
of Japanese culture.
Japanese culture is terribly uptight, because the Japanese are very
emotional people, underneath. Tremendously passionate. But they have to
hold that in, because they live in a crowded country, and space is the
most valuable thing in Japan, especially living space, because 80% of the
territory is uninhabitable. It's forested mountains, and you can't grow
anything there, you can't make much of a city. So they're all crowded into
20% of the country. And so this feeling of being pressed in by other
people is-- They try to handle it by exquisite politeness, and by orderly
behavior by vary strong convention. But this makes the average Japanese
man and woman kind of nervous. When a Japanese giggles, it's a sign not of
being amused, but of being embarrassed. And you'll find all sorts of funny
attitudes, such as people putting their hands over their mouths when
they're eating, or to conceal a giggle. And they're tremendously hung up
on social indebtedness, whether it's a debt to the emperor, or whether
it's a debt to your fathers and mothers, or whether it's a debt to someone
in the family, or whether it's a debt to friends whom you visited and they
entertained you. Well, you always take gifts with you when you go, but
then that still embarrasses your friends to whom you take the gifts,
because they have to consider the next time they go to visit you, they've
got to take gifts of the same value. And you wouldn't believe what goes
on.
So actually, what Zen is in Japan is a release from Japanese culture. It
is gettign rid of the hang-ups, but doing it in such a way as not to
embarrass the rest of society. So the Zen monks come on as if they're
pretty stiff; when they walk out in the street, they almost look like
soldiers. When they walk, they stride, they don't shuffle, like other
Japanese do. They don't giggle, ever. They have no need to. Because the
process of their discipline has liberated them from the social
conventions. Only they are very tactful and don't rush out like, you know,
a bunch of hippies or something and say 'Look, we're liberated!' They
pretend they're the very pillars of society.
So they follow a tradition which is very ancient, which is that in every
society, there is an inner group who doesn't believe in the fairy stories
they've been told. He sees through. To whom everything becomes completely
transparent. You see what games people are playing. And you don't despise
them for that. You see, they're involved in that because of their whole
conditioning. But you see through all those games.
The game--the me game--that everybody is playing is of course the survival
game.
And we think-- We've got our minds rigged about this in such a way that we
live in constant dread of sickness or of death or of loss of property or
status. Well, so what? Supposing you do.
Everybody's going to die someday. It's a little harder to take when you're
20 than when you're 50, but if you are entirely hung up on the idea that
YOU are this particular expression of the universe and that only, you
haven't been properly educated.
If you were awake, you would understand that you were the whole universe,
pretending, projecting itself at a point called here and now, in the form
of the human organism. And you would understand that very clearly, not
just as an idea, but as an actual vivid sensation, just the same way you
know you're sitting in this room.
And so the object of Zen, as of other ways of liberation--Taoism,
Hinduism; you'll find it even in Christianity in the Eastern Orthodox
Church; Islam--the object of these ways of liberation is to bring you to a
vivid, perfectly clear, I would say even sensuous realization of your true
identity as a temporary coming on and going off, coming on and going off,
or vibration as waves, of what there is, and always is, of the famous E
which equals MC squared. And you are that. You will be that, and always
will be that--accept that.
This whatever it is-- which, then no which, then which--it doesn't operate
in time. Time is a more or less human illusion. We will discover this to
be so in our experiments. You will discover that there is only now, and
there never was anything but now and never will be anything but now, and
now is eternity.
Now Zen is a little bit unlike the rest of Hinduism and Buddhism in that
it's summed up in these four principles: It's a special transmission of
the Buddhist enlightenment outside the scriptures. It does not depend on
words or letters. It points directly to your own mind-heart and attains
therefore Buddhahood directly. Buddhahood means the state of being
awakened to the real nature of things. But you see, what IS the real
nature of things? It obviously cannot be described. Just as if I were to
ask what is the true position of the stars in the big dipper.
Well, it depends from where you're looking. From one point in space, they
would be completely different in position from another. So there is no
true position of those stars. So in the same way, you cannot therefore
describe their true position or their true nature. And yet on the other
hand, when you look at them, and really don't try to figure it out, you
see them as they are, and they are as they are from every point of view,
wherever you look at them.
So there is no way of describing or putting you finger on what the
Buddhists call reality or in Sanscrit, tathata, which means 'suchness' or
'thatness,' or sunyata, which means 'voidness,' in the sense that all
conceptions of the world when absolutised are void. It doesn't mean that
the world is, in our Western sense, nothing. It means that it's no thing.
And a thing--as I think I explained last night--is a unit of thought. A
think.
So reality isn't a think. We cannot say what it is, but we can experience
it. And that is of course the project of Zen.
Now, it does it by direct pointing. And this is what exciting people about
Dr Suzuki's work when he first let people know about Zen in the Western
world. It seemed to consist of an enormous assemblage of weird anecdotes.
That these people instead of explaining had kind of a joke system, or kind
of a riddle system. the basic secret of the Buddha system is simply this,
and it's explained by a great Chinese Zen master, whose name was Hui-neng,
who died in the year 713 AD. And he explained it in his sutra. He said,
'If anybody asks you about secular matters, answer them in terms of
metaphysical matters. But if they ask you about things phusical, answer
them in terms of things worldly.' So if you ask a Zen master what is the
fundamental teaching of the Buddha, he answers immediately, 'Have you had
breakfast?' 'Yes.' 'If so, go and wash your bowl.' Or such a thing as
'Since I came to you master, you have never given me any instruction.'
'How can you say that I've never given you any instruction? When you
brought me tea, didn't I drink it? When you brought me rice, didn't I eat
it? When you saluted me, didn't I return the salutation? How can you say
that I haven't instructed you?' And the student said, 'Master, I don't
understand.' And he said, 'If you want to understand, see into it
directly, but when you begin to think about it, it is altogether missed.'
They have also in Zen monastaries a funny thing. It's a chin rest. If you
spend a long time meditating, it's sometimes convenient to have something
to rest your chin on, and it's called a Zen- bon. And so once a student
asked the teacher, 'Why did Bodidharma--' who is supposed to have brought
Zen, you know from India to China '--why did Bodidharma come to China?'
And the master said 'Give me that Zen-bon.' And the student passed it to
him and the master hit him with it.
A contrary kind of story. The master and one of his students were working,
I think pruning trees. And suddenly the student said to the master, 'Will
you let me have the knife?' And he handed it to him blade-first. He said
'Please let me have the other end.' And the master said 'What would you do
with the other end?' There was a group walking through the forest, and
suddenly the master picked up a branch and handed it to one of his
disciples and said 'Tell me, what is it?' Y'know, the master was still
holding it. He said 'Tell me, what is it?' The disciple hesitated, and the
master hit him with it. He passed it to another desciple. 'What is it?'
The disciple said 'Let me have it so I can tell you.' So the master threw
the branch at this other disciple, and he caught it and hit the master.
I was once talking with a Zen master, and in an idle sort of way we were
discussing these stories, and he said, 'You know, I've often wondered,
when water goes down a drain, does it go clockwise or anticlockwise?'
'Well, I said, it might do either.'
He said 'NO! It goes this way!' -apparently something visual here,. So
then he said 'Which came first, egg or hen?' So I said, -clucks like hen,.
He said 'Yes, that's right.'
Now all these Zen jokes are much simpler in their meaning than you would
ever imagine. They are so devestatingly simple that you don't see them.
Everybody looks for something complicated. When I was once visited by a
Chinese Zen man, I had my little daughter with me, and he said to her,
'You know, once upon a time, there was a man who kept a very small goose
in a bottle. A gosling. And it began to grow larger and larger until he
couldn't get it out of the bottle.
Now, he didn't want to break the bottle, and he didn't want to hurt the
goose, so what should he do?' And she said immediately, 'Just break the
bottle.' He turned to me and he said 'You see, they always get it when
they're under seven.'
So there's that side of Zen, and that side of Zen we would call,
essentially, in technical language, sanzen. That means, really, to study
Zen in the form of an interchange with the teacher. Sanzen in the
monastaries these days is very formal. But these are all stories from Tan
and Sung dynasty China, where the relationship of student and teacher was
more informal than it has now become. The other side of Zen is za-zen, or
the practice of meditation. And that involves-- You can actually practice
za-zen in four ways, corresponding to what the Buddhists call the four
dignitaries of man: walking, standing, sitting, and lying. Only sitting is
the one most used. But you should not imagine that Zen mediation requires
absolutely that it be done sitting. People get rather hung up on that, and
I get annoyed with people who come back from Japan having studied Zen and
brag about how long they sat and how much their legs hurt.
But za-zen is very fundamental to Zen, in one form or another. And it is
the art of letting your mind become still. That doesn't mean that it
becomes blank. That doesn't mean that you have no what we would call
sensory input. It means simply that you learn how to breath properly.
That's very important. And that you stop talking to yourself.
The interminable chatter inside your skull comes to rest. So what happens
is this-- I should add that there are various schools of Zen, with
different methods and different approaches, and my approach to it is again
somewhat different from other peoples, but buddhas have always have this
kind of elasticity.
But what normally happens is this: You have some difficulty in being
accepeted by a teacher, because Buddhism is not on a missionary basis.
They don't send out ads and invitations saying 'Come to our jolly church,'
you know. They wouldn't dream of doing that. Because it's up to you to
seek it out. They're never going to shove it down your throat. So it is
difficult to get into a Zen school. It isn't really a monastary as we have
monastaries, where the monks take life vows of poverty, chastity and
obedience. It's more like a theological seminary, and the monk, or
seminarist, as he might more accurately be called, stays there for a
number of years, until he feels he's got the thing that he went for.
The teacher, the master, is usually unmarried, but that doesn't prevent
him from having girlfriends. They are not uptight about sex in Zen, as
they are in other forms of Buddhism. They're very-- The whole atmosphere
of the monastary is very fascinating. Everybody is sort of alive. They
don't dither around. They're all working. But they're very open. In some
kinds of Buddhism, they have conniptions if you try to photograph
something. 'This is too sacred to be photographed,' sort of attitude. In
Zen, they say 'Help yourself! Photograph! Anything! Go on, take picture!'
So, completely open.
So then, they have these sesshins. You must distinguish between 'session,'
English, and 'sesshin,' Japanese. 'Sesshin' means a long, long period of
meditation practice, over say, a whole week. But especially early in the
morning, and at certain times of day, they all meet and they sit
cross-legged on their mats in meditation. In one set, they meditate on
what is called a koan, and that means a 'case,' in the sense of a case in
law establishing a precedent. And it's one of these stories. When the
great master Joshu, who lived in the Tung dynasty, was asked, 'Does a dog
have buddha nature?' he replied 'mu,' which means no. Everybody knows that
dogs have buddha nature. So why did the great master say 'mu'? That's a
koan. Or Hakuin invented a koan as a proverb in Chinese: One hand cannot
make a clap. So the koan is 'What is the sound of one hand?' Of course,
it's differently said in Japanese than it is in English.
But, you see, it sounds like a very, very complicated problem, and so
these students take this problem back for meditation, and they-- First of
all, the average person would start trying to arrive at an intellectual
answer. And if he takes that back to the teacher, the teacher simply
rejects it out of hand, time after time after time.
I had a friend who had this koan, and he was an American. And one day he
was going to the teacher for sanzen, and he saw a bullfrog. They have many
bullfrogs in Japan, about so big, sitting in the garden, and they're very
tame. So he swooped up this bullfrog and dropped it in the sleeve of his
kimono. And when he got to the master, he produced the bullfrog as the
answer to the koan. The master shook his head and said 'Uh-uh, too
intellectual.' So people get desperate about these things, and they go to
all sorts of lengths to try and answer them, because they don't realize
how simple the answer is. That's what's always overlooked. If you were to
answer that koan in English, it gives it to you as it's stated. It says
'WHAT is the sound of one hand?' .Watts finds this very funny, but nobody
else does, It's very difficult for people to become that simple. And you
can become that simple only through meditation where you stop all the
words and you see all the things perfectly directly. And so accomplished
Zen people are very, very direct. Their life is completely simplified,
because they know perfectly well--and if you look, and see youself--that
there is only this present moment. No past. No future.
So what's your problem? You know, you could ask this of anyone. Well, you
could say 'I've got all sorts of problems and responsibilites' and so on.
All right. Don't other people have some share in this? You see, we are
always being spiritually conceited in thinking we have to take care of
everybody else, and that can sometimes do people a peculiar disservice,
because they get into the idea that everybody should take care of them.
And so we go around ingratiating ourselves by making all sorts of promises
about which we feel enthusiastic at the time, but the enthusiasm wears off
and then we don't keep them and then people get annoyed. And we go about
telling people how much we like them when we don't. And all sorts of
things of that kind by not being direct, you see. This is the whole idea
of Zen, is directness. By not being direct, we create a great deal of
trouble.
However, the primary concern of Zen is not so much with interpersonal
relations, as it is with man's relation with nature. In view of life and
death, where are you? They have an incscription that hangs up in Zen
monastaries, which says 'Birth and death is a serious event. Time waits
for no one.' Which is sort of equivalent to the Christian 'Work out your
salvation with diligence.' Or with fear and trembling.
So it begins in a clarification of our relationship with existence. With
being. And therefore it lies in a more, I would say, primary or
kindergarden level than the encounter group, which is concerned with
personal relationships. But I don't think you can set up harmonious
personal relationships until you've got with yourself. Until you've got
with the sky, the trees, and the rocks, and the water, and the fire. Then
you're fundamental. You're really alive. From that position, you can
relate much better to other people, because you don't come on as a kind of
'poor little me, who's in this universe on probation and doesn't really
belong' attitude. And most of us do that, terribly apologetic for our
existence. Just because we're aplogetic, some people are insufferably
proud, because they feel they have to compensate for this inferior status
in the universe by overdoing it with boastfulness and with agression
towards others. But if you know that-- Well, when Dogen came back from
China--he lived around 1200 AD, and studied Zen there and founded a great
monastary--they asked him 'What did you learn in China?' He said, 'I
learned that the eyes are horizontal, and the nose is perpendicular.' Now
in all these things, don't search for a deep symbolism. Some decrepit
modern Chinese Zen will look for--will give you a symbolic understanding
of all these sayings. But they're NOT symbolic; they're absolutely direct.
So when somebody says, you see, that the fundamental principle of Buddhism
is a cyprus tree in the garden, you are not to understand this this is
some pantheistic doctrine in which the cyprus tree is a manifestation of
the godhead. Let me illustrate the point further, because I can't
illustrate it intellectually. It's a little bit of a complicated story,
but I think you can follow it.
There is a sect of Buddhism in Japan called Jodo-shinshu .Sukhavati?,,
which means the true teaching about the pure land. And they have a method
of meditation in which they call upon the name of a transcendental buddha
called Amida. So they say this formula, 'Namu Amida Butsu.' Namu means
like 'hail,' only it means, in other cultures and other languages than
ours, instead of saying 'hail,' they say 'name,' 'nama.' So 'Namu Amida
Bustu' means 'Hail Amitabha buddha,' or 'Amida' is the Japanese. That
formula is called 'Nambutsu,' or 'Having the buddha in mind.' There was a
priest of this sect that went to study with a Zen master, and had made
good progress, and the master told him to write a poem expressing his
understanding.
So he wrote the following poem: When nambutsu is said, There is neither
oneself nor Buddha; Na-mu- a-mi-da-bu-tsu-- Only the sound is heard. And
the Zen master scratched his head awhile, because he wasn't quite
satisfied with it, so the student submitted another poem which did satisfy
the master, and it went like this: When the nambutsu is said, There is
neither oneself nor Buddha; Na-ma-a-mi-da-bu-tsu, Na-ma-a-mi-da-bu-tsu.
The master was satisfied, but in my opinion it had one line too many.
So you see that the Zen practice involves using words to get beyond words,
where we might use words simply for their sound. Let's suppose you say the
word 'yes.' Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. You come to think after a
while 'Isn't that a funny kind of noise to make?' And we are delivered
from the hypnotic effect of words by this particular use of words. We
learn they're only words after all, but we hypnotize people by using
words.
And children, for instance, have no antibodies against words, so they get
absolutely frantic, you know. 'Jeannie called me a sissy!' So what? But
children get absolutely desperate about it because we put this power of
words upon them, these incantations. These are spells, you see. All
magicians embroil people in spells and incantations, because they use
words to beguil. And so then, we are from infancy told who we are, what is
our identity, what our expectations should be, what we ought to get out of
life, what class we belong to. And we believe the whole thing. And having
believed it, we come to sense it, as we sense the hard wood of the corner
of the table, and we think it's real, and it's a bunch of hogwash.
It's an amusing game, if you know that that's all it is, and can be played
with eloquence. But the more you know it's ONLY an illusion, the better
you can play it.
So then. In this practice, it is very important, as I said last night, to
bear it in mind that Zen study or Zen meditation--and this includes yoga
and other forms of meditation--is not like any other form of exercise, in
that it is NOT done for a purpose. You may ask me 'How can I possibly do
something that is not being done for a purpose?' because you have a fixed
idea, which is part of the hypnosis, that everything you do is done for a
purpose.
For what purpose do you have belly rumbles? I remember Soki Antsuzaki,
who was a great Zen master, sitting in his gorgeous golden robes, with
incense burning in front of him, and his scriptures open on the stand, and
holding a sort of sceptor that Zen masters occasionally hold, and reading
a passage from the sutra, then by commment saying, 'Fundamental principle
of Buddhism is purposelessness. Most important to attain state of no
purpose. When you drop fart, you don't say 'At 9:00, I drop fart.' It just
happen.' And all this kind crypto-Christain audience, very embarrassed,
stuffing handherchiefs into their mouths.
In Chinese, their word for nature is 'tzu-jan,' in Japanese, 'shi-jen,'
at that means, 'what is so of itself. We would say 'spontaneity.' A tree
has no intention to grow. Water has no intention to flow. The clouds have
no intention to blow. And as the poem says, When the wild geese fly over
the lake, The water does not intend to reflect them, And the geese have no
mind to cast their image.
Now, that worries us. First of all, we think that spontaneity is mere
capricious action. There's nothing very capricious about the way a tree
grows. It's a highly intelligent design. So is the bird. So are you. But a
lot of people who don't quite understand Zen think that spontaneity is
just doing anything, and the more it looks like anything, the more
spontaneous it is. In other words, they have a preconception of
spontaneity, that a person behaving spontaneously. Or would probably be
vulgar, impolite, rude. It doesn't follow; that's merely a preconception
of the nature of spontaneity. Spontaneity is the way you grow your hair,
it's not the way you think you ought to grow your hair. It's the way it
happens. So that's a really high order of intelligence.
What is happening, then, in the discipline of Zen is that we are trying to
move into the place where we use that intelligence in everyday life--but
you see, you can't get it on purpose. The purpose, the motivation always
spoils it. So you would ask then, 'How do I get rid of purpose?' On
purpose? That you ask that question simply shows how tied up you are in
the thinking process. You cannot force that process to stop. You have to
see it as nonsense.
Babble. Interminable babble in your head.
So one learns to listen to one's thoughts and let the mind think anything
it wants to think, but don't take it seriously. And the idea of you doing
this is also a babble in the head. And eventually--but without bothering
about any eventually, because in this state, there is no future; you're
not concerned about the future. Purpose is always concerned with the
future.
Now what bugs Western people about this is they would say 'Are you trying
to tell us that life has no meaning, no purpose?' Yes. What's so bad about
that?
What sort of meaning would you like it to have? Propose me a meaning for
life. Anything you want. Well, when people try to think of what the
meaning of life is, they say 'Well, I think that we're all part of a plan,
and that working as if we were characters in a novel or a play, and we are
all working towards a great fulfillment.
One day, perhaps after we're dead, perhaps in the future life, there'll be
a great gazoozie. There'll be a galuptious, glorious goodie at the end of
the line, see? And that's what we're all for, see? To get in with that.
And it will all be very, very important, because it won't be something
trivial. It will be something extremely holy.' Well I say 'What's your
idea of something very holy?' Well, nobody really knows. You know, they
think about church, and medieval artists who used to represent heaven in
the form of everybody sitting in choir stalls. And I must say hell looked
much more fun. It was a kind of sado-masochistic orgy.
But heaven looked insufferably dull. And when those little children sang
hymns about those eternal sabbaths, it was a a very, depressing future, I
can assure you.
But you see, when you follow through these ideas, what do you want? What
is the goodie? What is progress all about? You realize that you just don't
know. So the question is immediately posed for the meditator, but aren't
you there already?
I mean, isn't THIS what it's about?
Go to Deoxy.Org For more Alan Watts
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Planetary Changes: Last Update February 10, 2002
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Chronic Fatigue Syndrome & Depression
A Brief History of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
CFS has only recently been recognized as a distinct condition by the
medical community. A recent report by the Royal College of physicians
officially proclaimed it "real" in the sense that they recognize a cluster
of symptoms which is distinguishable from any other disease. They stated
that this symptom cluster appeared to have no one cause, with both
physical and psychological problems playing a part in the condition. CFS
has officially replaced the term M.E. (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis), because
there is no consistent evidence for the swelling of nervous tissue that
this name implies. It has also replaced the term Post Viral Fatigue
Syndrome, as the symptoms are not always associated with an initial viral
infection.
This marks the most recent stage in a long debate within the medical
community and society at large concerning the nature of what is now called
(in Britain anyway) CFS. Neither the condition or the debate are new.
At the end of the last century, doctors were holding a similar debate over
a condition called Neurasthenia. This was characterized by fatigue and
muscle weakness, leaving sufferers able to do very little. There was no
medical consensus around cause or cure. Some doctors advocated rest,
others exercise. Some said it particularly affected successful, active
buisnessmen, professionals, even doctors. Others said it was mainly an
illness of females, and was largely "all in the mind".
Anyone familiar with the recent debate around CFS will recognize this
situation. The puzzled and divided medics; the distressed sufferer being
given conflicting advice; the cartoon stereotypes of an unsympathetic
media.
Later into the this century, the medical community coined the term "work
shyness". This more obviously judgmental label was mainly stuck on the
working classes. Again this class difference in diagnoses is persistent
today. Community studies have shown that people with the symptoms of CFS
occur equally across all classes, however those who actually get a
diagnoses of ME or CFS and referral for any kind of treatment, are more
likely to be middle class. Many sufferers are aware of having had to fight
for their condition to be taken seriously. It would appear that the middle
class are better equipped to access and articulate the information
necessary for such a fight.
There appears to have been a relative period of quiet over this disorder
mid century. It comes to media prominence again in the eighties, under two
names - ME and Yuppie Flu. The latter was the name coined by a habitually
unsympathetic media which had decided that sufferers were high flyers who
could no longer keep up the fast, eighties, Thatcherite pace, who had
burned out under pressure.
Again the medical community were split. There were those who believed it
was a physical condition, those who believed it was psychological. This is
such a traditional divide - the mind from the body - that, until recently,
few have questioned it. As we shall see later, this division is not
necessarily true or useful.
In the physical camp there have been a variety of theories. Some have
believed it to be an immunological deficiency (in parts of America it is
labeled CFIDS, Chronic Fatigue and Immune Deficiency Disorder); a muscle
tissue disorder; a central and\or peripheral nervous system disorder and,
most commonly, a persistent virus.
In the psychological camp the main theory was that CFS was an
unacknowledged depression. This had the unfortunate affect of reinforcing
that other media fiction - the "all in the mind" illness. This carries the
connotation that the condition is less real or even pretend, together with
the implication of the very British "pull yourself together" school of
treatment
Not surprisingly most sufferers sided themselves with the physical camp.
Throughout the eighties and into the nineties the debate became more and
more polarized and less useful. As no one could agree what was going on in
CFS, there was no consistent approach to treatment, and an increasing
sense of hopelessness around the possibility of change or cure.
However recently things have changed somewhat. The medical community has
begun to see that so called physical and psychological factors cannot be
readily separated in any condition - be it cancer or depression - and
there has been an increased focus on the management of CFS. This has
produced research showing that adopting a consistent approach to managing
the condition can produce a substantial improvement in the majority of
sufferers. The focus has shifted from looking for a single cause and a
"magic bullet" cure, to looking at how a variety of factors can cause,
maintain and change the condition. Most importantly, there is now a
climate of hope around CFS, which was unthinkable just a few years ago.
The next section will describe the variety of factors that appear to be at
play in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
A Holistic Approach To CFS.
Before attempting to present a model of CFS, let us look at some of the
factors that a variety of research has shown can play a part in this
condition. We will look at this in three sections. Factors that tend to
keep CFS going, factors that start it off and factors that make you more
likely to get it in the first place.
First though, a word of caution. All, some or none of the information
below may apply to you. It doesn't actually matter. If it helps you too
make some sense of your condition, fair enough. If it doesn't, ignore it.
The most important part of this web site is the self help. We know this
works in the majority of cases. If the below means nothing to you, then
proceed to the self help section and try it anyway.
Who gets fatigue?
If we look at fatigue in general, rather than CFS in particular, two
things are immediately apparent. Firstly it is very common, over 30% of
the population experience fatigue at any one time. Secondly there are a
variety of causes for it.
Listed below are just a few.
Doing things to our bodies - To begin with the obvious, not sleeping can
make us tired. We get fatigued after exercise. Being ill often results in
tiredness. Most "recreational drugs", both legal and illegal will make us
tired, though maybe not till the next day. Having an intense emotional or
physical experience - arguments, sex, shock, violence - these will fatigue
or exhaust us. Not drinking enough fluids can make us tired.
This is all predictable, short term "normal fatigue". Fatigue here is
telling us to stop what we are doing and to let our body recuperate for a
while.
However some fatigue is more long term, less obviously useful. Here the
links between what we do and how we feel are less obvious.
The pressures of life.
Both from research and anecdotal evidence, it is now clear that anyone
under stress is more likely to become fatigued and/or ill. Some of the
reasons for this are only just becoming clear and are the subject of a new
field of medicine -psychoneuroimmunology. As the name suggests, this
studies the links between life events, the way we perceive and cope with
those events, the functioning of our brain and nervous system and the
functioning of our immune system. At last there is a scientific basis for
what has been obvious to most of humanity for most of the time - stress
make us ill.
A brief word on the mechanism of this. Consider short term stress. The
principle purpose of the stress response is to allow us to cope with
situations requiring rapid response. A fire alarm goes off, a child has an
accident, a chip pan goes on fire - what happens to our bodies?
First of all our sympathetic nervous system switches on. Our pulse and
blood pressure go up, our breathing rate increases. This mobilizes energy.
Our pupils dilate to let in more light. other parts of the body - our
digestive system, our hands and feet, - get resources diverted away from
them (thus cold feet and butterflies).
All this allows us to make a quick response. If the stress is present for
longer, another physical mechanism kicks in. This is the hypothalamus -
pituitary -adrenal system. This acts by regulating chemicals such as
cortisol which have wide ranging effects on the brain, and our nervous,
immune and hormonal systems.
The results of the activation of this system are again, in the short term,
beneficial. Cortisol increases our ability to distinguish between
sensations - thus the "heightened awareness" people often report in
extreme situations (good or bad). it also mobilizes adrenaline allowing us
to access an intense burst of energy.
However the effects of a prolonged or repeated stress response are less
good. Animal and human studies have shown that prolonged stress leads to a
profound alteration in our immune functioning. We are more likely to catch
cold under stress, latent viruses such as herpes are more likely to
express themselves. The immune system is complex and still only partial
understood, but the overall effect of prolonged stress is to decrease the
functioning of the immune system. Continuing stress will also lead to long
term alterations in our levels of neurotransmitters, our hormone levels,
all of which in turn will effect our mood and energy levels (for the
worse). It also now clear that depressed mood leads to a depressed immune
system and vice versa. The pieces of this puzzle are still being put
together, but the fact that stress leads to profound, if subtle, changes
in our functioning - at all levels - is now beyond doubt.
Lifestyles and life events.
We know that certain life events and lifestyles make more people prone to
fatigue and illness. People who develop fatigue problems are more likely
to have had major life events happen to them in the year previous to
developing the problem. Life events can be either positive or negative -
marriage, bereavement, changing job, moving house, the break -up of a
relationship. All of these will exert there toll on the individual. For
instance a study done of divorced couples showed that they had
significantly more depressed immune functioning than average, and that
there was significant correlation between the level of immune depression
and the level of ongoing emotional attachment to the relationship.
Certain lifestyles are more subtly fatiguing. Having little rest, working
under pressure, being a single parent, looking after an ill relative,
being unemployed. In a way these are obvious sources of fatigue. Less
obviously the kind of lifestyle the sports enthusiast or athlete has puts
the same kind of pressure on their body, even though it is perceived as
positive. It is now clear that the immune functioning of training athletes
is lower than normal, their tendency to fatigue and illness is greater.
Personality Factors
It is now clear that a tendency towards hostility and aggression is
positively correlated with a tendency towards heart disease. Recent
evidence has shown that a tendency to suppress strong emotion and to avoid
conflict is positively correlated with the development of certain types of
cancer. Is there any type of personality that is more likely to develop
Fatigue?
There is some evidence that there is. People who are more inclined to set
high standards for themselves and their performance, who have a tendency
towards perfectionism seem more likely to get fatigued. In a way this
makes sense. If you decide that you have to perform 100% all of the time,
you are going to be expending a lot more energy than someone whose
expectations are less high. Also if you decide that you always should be
able to perform at peak level, you will be less tolerant of tiredness and
more likely to push yourself when you should rest.
So, these are some of the things that can make people prone to fatigue.
However what is likely to precipitate a Chronic Fatigue Problem.?
What starts fatigue.
Viruses -
Physical Illness does appear to be present at the beginning of the
majority of cases of Chronic Fatigue. Having a viral infection certainly
makes us fatigued, in some cases for up to three months after we first
contracted it. So a virus can certainly seem to trigger a CF problem.
Research from our group and others has suggested that some infections are
more likely to trigger the illness than others - viral meningitis,
glandular fever and Q fever for example, but so far there is no evidence
that the virus is still there after the initial infection is over. Traces
of the virus can, of course, often be found, but there is no evidence the
virus continues to exert a long term influence. This is not HIV in which
viral persistence continues in a harmful fashion.
Crises-
As mentioned above, major life events are common in the lead up to CFS
Nothing -
Sometimes there is no obvious reason why someone, either gradually or
suddenly, gets more and more tired, then exhausted, then pained and
disabled. Whatever the reason, the overall effect is a sudden or gradual
inability to keep up the kind of life they previously did.
What can keep fatigue going?
How we cope makes a difference - Take the example of heart disease.
Rehabilitation from a heart problem can take a variety of courses. In one
scenario the individual becomes fearful of any exertion, believing that
this increases the likelihood of another heart problem. They feel helpless
and under threat of death. If they are a smoker or drinker or over-eater
it is possible that they resort to more of these behaviors because of the
stress. The become anxious and demoralized. The combination of inactivity,
fear, helplessness and use of food and drugs does indeed make them more
likely to another cardiac incident.
In an alternative scenario, the same individual adopts an approach of
gradual re-introduction of exercise, reduction of stress and stressors and
develops a feeling of being in control of their recovery. Prognosis thus
improves.
More subtly, in recovery from cancer, the individuals beliefs about
outcome have been shown to be important. On receiving diagnoses,
individuals who adopt either the fighting it attitude, or who go into
denial, have a better chance of survival than those who feel hopeless and
helpless. Prognosis in recovery can be improved by helping people change
the way they manage their illness.
What this demonstrates is that there are several factors at play in
illness and recovery. First there is the bare physical fact of the
illness. Secondly there is how that makes us feel emotionally and how we
believe we should handle it. Thirdly there is how we actually do handle
it. The second two factors are as important as the first. It is no
different in Chronic Fatigue. Some ways of managing are more helpful than
others.
However due to the controversy surrounding CFS, sufferers have often been
given conflicting advice or advice that is not, in the long term,
necessarily helpful. Equally suffers may be merely following the dictates
of their bodies - if something causes pain or fatigue then one naturally
avoids that something.
Let us look in more detail about what we know to be useful and less useful
ways of managing CF problems.
Rest -
The natural response to an illness is to rest. There are few illness
where, in the short term, one would not be advised to rest. However in
CFS, one is often advised to rest, rest and more rest, over a prolonged
period of time. We are now beginning to realize that this is not a good
thing. Prolonged rest has been shown to be detrimental on a number of
levels
Physically it leads to deconditioning of the body, affecting the immune
system, the muscular system and the nervous system adversely. Even a
healthy individual if forced into prolonged rest, will fairly quickly
become much less healthy. They will lose about 3% of there muscle mass a
day, become progressively weaker and more prone to illness.
Mentally, over resting leads to sluggishness, lack of motivation and
concentration and low mood. Particularly if one feels one has no
alternative but to rest, one becomes s frustrated and demoralized.
However this is not to say don't rest. Rest is essential, be we fit or
ill. Indeed another factor that appears to be common in the onset period
of Chronic Fatigue Problems is too little rest. People often struggle on
through illness, attempting to maintain a lifestyle that is beyond them,
resulting in them becoming more ill and fatigued. Eventually they crash.
Sl eep
- Again in Chronic Fatigue Problems, people often develop disturbed
sleeping patterns. Often this will take the form of having poor quality or
unrefreshing sleep at night, often for more hours than prior to illness,
followed by day time sleep to compensate for feeling so tired during the
day. Several things are going on here.
Firstly we know that, as with resting, it is possible to oversleep, that
sleeping more makes us more tired and sluggish during the day. Secondly
there is a vicious circle at work. If we sleep during the day this reduces
the quality of sleep at night which in turn makes us more tired during the
day, which makes us more likely to sleep during the day, which reduces
sleep quality at night... and so on. More subtly, if we spend a lot of the
day resting and unstimulated, there is less need for deep prolonged sleep
at night, even though we may feel more exhausted than when we were active.
This lack of good quality sleep can lead to further frustration and
exhaustion, more resting and more daytime sleep which in turn...
In short, once our sleep rhythm is disturbed, it can have profound effects
on how we feel. Managing this differently can make fatigue problems better
or worse.
Activity
- If activity leads to pain and exhaustion, it is only natural to avoid
it and to rest until we feel up to it. This often happens in CFS.
Individuals will save energy in prolonged rest, be active for a while
then, perhaps a day later, feel the physical effects of that activity -
exhaustion, muscle pain - and then rest again for long period. This boom
and bust cycle tends to be typical of CFS. Again there are certain
elements of a vicious circle in this pattern. If activity produces pain
and exhaustion we avoid it. The more we avoid it, the less able we become
to do it. When, for whatever reason, we are forced to do it again, it
produces even more pain and exhaustion, this leads to more rest and
avoidance.
Eventually, as with any other Chronic Illness, particularly one where
there appears to be no hope and the sufferer feels that they have little
control over their condition, demoralization and depression often occur.
These feelings make an already bad situation worse.
Towards a model of CFS.
So, these are some of the factors that appear to be at work in the onset
and maintenance of CFS. Let us now attempt to synthesize these into a
model of the condition. This will in turn lead to a management strategy
for improving condition. That fact that this management strategy has been
shown to work lends indirect support to the model it is based on. Let us
look at that first.
Before proceeding though, again, a word of caution. You may recognise
yourself in some of this. You may not. If it means nothing to you, go on
to the self help section and try what is suggested there anyway.
Let us first attempt to construct a typical CFS history and see how the
factors above can help make sense of it. [see also Chronic Fatigue
Histories based on true life stories].
Every individual will have a level of activity beyond which they cannot
function for long. We all exceed this occasionally - running for a bus,
going through the stress of studying for exams etc. Functioning beyond
that limit for long will produce increasing fatigue, pain and propensity
to illness.
Let us look at how this might work in practice. At the beginning, the
individual is busy, but not too busy. The general flavour of that business
could contain numerous factors - busy work, social life, exercise and
sport, childcare commitments, being generally driven. As time goes on
however, the individual is beginning to reach their limit. This can be for
two reasons - either their activity level goes up, or their limit comes
down. In fact the two will often go together. An increase in activity
levels without time for rest will weaken the individual and lower the
limit of coping. The longer one tries to function over or near one's
limit, the more the limit will reduce. Sometime external circumstance -
viral illness, life crises, will lead to an abrupt reduction of the
persons limit.
An individual may carry on like this for some time, perhaps feeling
increasingly tired or perhaps thriving on the pace. At some point comes
the straw that breaks the camels back. Most clients that we see report
some critical incident, usually a viral infection, sometimes an operation
or other life event at which point they clearly feel themselves to be
fatigued and ceasing to cope.
They may struggle on for some time. Between point A and B, they are trying
to maintain their activity level whilst their ability to cope, their limit
is reducing all the time. The further they get above that limit, the more
they feel fatigued, ill and unable to cope, the lower that limit becomes.
Two things can happen at point B. Either the individual will abruptly stop
trying to cope and abruptly drop their activity levels (this is
illustrated in Graph 1). Or they will gradually drop more and more from
their life (see Graph 2).
At point B the individual decides to stop work, drop responsibilities and
rests. Again several things can happen at this point. The individual may
not rest enough and attempt to resume their former activities too soon
(point C), whilst they are still not recovered. This puts them in the red
zone, leading to an abrupt return of fatigue and pain (point D). They may
struggle on for a period, during which time their limit decreases further.
At some point (E) they will return to rest again.
Most individual will eventually enter a period where they rest a lot, or
do much less than they used to for a prolonged period. As pointed out
above, prolonged rest is actually detrimental to the system, reducing the
limit even further (between B and C; between E and F). This means that a
lower and lower level activity will produce distressing symptoms. The
person will naturally reduce their activity levels in response to this. In
so doing, with the increase in rest and sleep that this usually entails,
they will reduce their limit even further.
Eventually, at point F, most people reach a "stable state." They will
have, through hard won experience, a knowledge of their current limit. On
days when they are more symptom free than others they will push over it.
This will then lead to symptom increase from which they will recover by
resting for, perhaps, a day or two. Once the symptoms are less, they will
push the limit again. These symptom lead patterns of activity and rest,
the boom and bust cycle, characterize Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. You may
recognize this end stage of having to live within a very narrow limit.
Let us look in a bit more detail at the physiology of boom and bust. When
you do too much - that is when you exceed your current physical limits,
given your current health and fitness, you cause the individual muscle
fibres to behave abnormally. These are called eccentric contractions.
Instead of a smooth co-ordinated contraction, the individual fibres pull
against each other, causing microscopic areas of damage. Over the next
24-48 hours this damage repairs, but causes delayed pain. Hence the "boom"
is not a good idea. Furthermore, because the excess activity leaves you
exhausted, and in need of rest, during the following period exactly the
opposite happens. The muscles get weaker, and even more vulnerable to the
next period of activity.
Some people will reach that stable state without such dramatic ups and
downs before hand.
As I said you may not recognize yourself in any of these patterns or
cycles, or you may recognize bits of it. The important point to grasp is
that whatever started it off, the pattern of Chronic Fatigue often becomes
self perpetuating, a vicious circle that one gradually enters and that it
can be hard to break.
DEPRESSION: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
A depressive illness is a "whole body-mind" illness, involving your body,
mood, thoughts and behavior. It affects the way you eat and sleep, the way
you feel about yourself, and the way you think about others and the
outside world. A depressive illness is not a passing blue mood. A rule of
thumb is that depression affects your functioning and lasts for two weeks
or longer. People with depressive illness cannot merely "pull themselves
together" and get better. If nothing else sticks in your mind from reading
this article, this is one of the most important points that people who
have not experienced depression should remember, to do otherwise; to say,
"Just pull yourself out of it" will make the depressed person's self worth
plunge even deeper. Without treatment, symptoms can last for weeks, months
or years. Over 80% of people who suffer from depression can be helped with
appropriate treatment.
Types of Depression
Depressive illnesses come in different appearances and depth. There are
many types of depression, I will cover only three and there are many
varieties of these, so get professional help if you show the depressive
signs which we will cover next and ask you doctor which one you have.
Major Depression presents a combination of symptoms which interfere with
the ability to work, sleep, eat and enjoy the usual pleasures of life. A
major depression can be disabling and can occur once, twice or several
times in a lifetime.
A less severe type of depression, dysthymia, involves long-term, chronic
symptoms that do not interfere with functioning or do not disable, but
keep the depressed person from feeling good and running at "full steam."
There is a condition commonly caused "double depression" in which a person
suffers from dysthymia and also has one or more major depressive episodes.
Another type of depressive illness is manic-depressive illness, often
called bipolar depression when accompanied with manic episodes or unipolar
when primarily just characterized with recurring depressive episodes. This
form of mental illness demonstrates mood changes that are dramatic and can
be rapid, but more often have a gradual onset. We will next review some of
the symptoms of both mania and depression. Mania often affects judgment
and social behavior which cause embarrassment to the person and his
family. Many times the manic episode is accompanied by unwise spending and
decisions and brings on financial problems.
SYMPTOMS OF DEPRESSION AND MANIA
Not everyone has every symptom and some people have a very few. There are
variances in the severity and number of symptoms experienced by each
individual.
Depression:
Persistent sad, anxious or "empty" mood feelings of hopelessness,
pessimism, feelings of guilt, worthlessness, helplessness loss of interest
or pleasure in things previously enjoyed including sex, insomnia, early
morning awakening or oversleeping, appetite changes and/or weight loss or
weight gain decreased energy, fatigue, "slowed down" thoughts of death or
suicide, suicide attempts, restlessness, irritability, difficulty
concentrating, remembering, making simple decisions, persistent physical
symptoms which do not have a physical basis and do not respond to
traditional treatment, such as headaches, digestive disorders and chronic
pain.
Mania:
Inappropriate high, inappropriate irritability, severe insomnia, grandiose
ideas about own self, people or environment, incessant talking,
disconnected and racing thoughts, pressured speech, increased sexual
desire, markedly increased energy, poor judgment, inappropriate social
behaviour, and overspending
Next month we will talk about the causes of depression and the methods of
treatment. But before we go if you or someone you know is experiencing the
above symptoms especially over a period of two weeks or to the severity of
danger to themselves or others, please get them immediate professional
help. More on that next time. But what you can do as a loved one is to
know the person is unable to get better without help and can't just "snap
out of it." Listen and be supportive, offer to take them with you on a
walk or for a drive , let the person know he is worthwhile being with, DO
NOT accuse the depressed person of faking illness or of laziness.
Eventually with treatment most depressed people do get better with time
and professional help.
Depression: Causes and Treatment
Causes of Depression
Risk Factors for developing depression include a family history of
depression, indicating that a biological predisposition can be inherited.
This risk may be somewhat more prevalent in those with bipolar
depressions. However, not everybody with a genetic predisposition develops
depression. Apparently additional factors, are most likely involved in the
development of depression.
Sometimes major depression seems to occur, generation after generation, in
some families, it can also occur in people who have no family history of
depression. If the predisposition for the disease is inherited or not, it
is evident that individuals often have too little or too much of certain
neuro chemicals, also called neurotransmitters such as serotonin and
dopamine.
Psychological makeup also plays a large role in the development of
depression. People who have low self-esteem, who consistently view
themselves and others with pessimism or who are vulnerable to stress are
prone to depression. This vulnerability can be triggered into a depressive
state by a serious loss, chronic illness, difficult relationship,
financial problems or any stressful change in life patterns. It appears
that depression is a combination of genetic predisposition, psychological
and environmental factors that makes one vulnerable to the onset of a
depressive state.
TREATMENT
There is a large variety of antidepressant medications and psychotherapies
developed to treat depressive illness. Some people do well with
psychotherapy, some people do well with antidepressants or a combination
of the two. One therapist or type of therapy may be successful for one
person and not for another. There is a lot of trial and error as each
individual is different, just because one medication or type of therapy
wasn't successful, doesn't mean another won't be successful. It is
important to note that most people, unless a threat to themselves or
others, can be successfully treated for depression on an outpatient basis.
On rare occasions, electroconvulsive therapy is useful, particularly for
individuals whose depression is severe or life-threatening.
ANTIDEPRESSANT MEDICATIONS
There are three groups of antidepressant medications used to treatment
depressive illnesses, antidepressants of the tricyclic nature or the newer
ones that affect neurotransmitters in blocking uptake of the
neuro-hormones such as serotonin and dopamine etc., MAO inhibitors and
lithium. Lithium is used in the treatment of bipolar illness and
recurrent, major depressions. Again trial and error is the key, sometimes
your doctor will try a variety of antidepressants before finding the
medication or combination of medications most effective for you. It
doesn't mean he doesn't know what he is doing, it means each individual
person responds differently with brain chemistry. The newer medications
such as Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft; generally have less side effects than the
other two categories of antidepressants (tricyclics and MAO inhibitors).
They again work by blocking serotonin uptake or uptake of dopamine.
Patients often are tempted to stop taking their medication too soon,
thinking it isn't helping or I can't afford this. The antidepressant must
build up a level in the blood stream and cross the blood-brain barrier
when therapeutic levels are reached and slowly begin to have an effect on
the neurotransmitters, usually this takes weeks. It is important to keep
taking medication until your doctor says to stop, even if you feel better
beforehand. Some medications must be stopped gradually to give your body
time to adjust. Some medication must be taken for life, particularly in
severely depressed individuals and bipolar patients. Lithium is to a
bipolar patient as insulin is to a diabetic. If finances in purchasing the
medication are problematic, ask your doctor for samples or/and seek out
your local Mental Health Association.
Antidepressant drugs are not habit-forming. Dosages do have to be
carefully monitored and tailored to the individual. If you are taking MAO
inhibitors, you will have to avoid aged cheeses, raisins, bananas, wines
and pickles which interact and cause sometimes severe reactions.
Never mix medications of any kind-prescribed, over-the counter or
borrowed-without consulting you doctor. Alcohol in all circumstances
should be avoided and works against the action of the antidepressant. This
includes wine, beer and hard liquor.
Tranquillisers (anti-anxiety drugs) or sedatives are not anti-depressants.
They may be prescribed along with antidepressants; however, they should
not be taken alone for a depressive illness. Sleeping pills and
amphetamines are also inappropriate. Consult your pharmacist's information
sheets for side effects and report these promptly to your doctor. Hard
candy or gum are effective in relieving dry mouth. Also drink a lot of
water.
PSYCHOTHERAPIEs
There are many forms of psychotherapy used to help depressed individuals.
"Talking" therapies help patients gain insight into and resolve their
problems. "Behavioural" therapists help patients learn how to obtain more
satisfaction and self-rewards from their own action and to unlearn
Behavioural patterns that contribute to their depression.
Two of the short-term psychotherapy’s that are helpful for some forms of
depression are Interpersonal and Cognitive/Behavioural therapies.
Interpersonal therapists focus on the patient's disturbed person
relations. Cognitive/Behavioural therapists help patients change the
negative styles of thinking and behaviour often associated with
depression.
Psychodynamic therapies, such as psychoanalysis, are sometimes used to
treat depression, focusing on resolving the internal conflicts that are
typically thought to be rooted in childhood
Choose the therapist with whom you can best relate and whose approach you
as an individual feel will best help you.
HELPING YOURSELF
Depressive illnesses make you feel exhausted, worthless, helpless and
hopeless. Such negative thoughts and feelings make some people feel like
giving up. It is important to realise that these negative views are part
of the depression and typically do not accurately reflect your situation.
Negative thinking fades as treatment begins to take effect. In the
meantime:
Do not set yourself difficult goals to take on a great deal of
responsibility
Break large tasks into small ones, set some priorities, and do what you
can as you can.
Do not expect too much from yourself. This will only increase feelings of
failure.
Try to be with other people; it is usually better than being alone.
Participate in activities that make you feel better. Don't overdo it or
get upset if your mood is not greatly improved right away. Feeling better
takes time.
Do not make major life decisions, without consulting others who know you
well and who have a more objective view of your situation. Postpone
important decisions until your depression has lifted.
Do not expect to "snap out" of your depression and do not blame yourself
for not being up to par.
Remember, do not accept your negative thinking.. It is part of the
depression and will disappear as your depression responds to treatment.
top
Gates to Buddhist Practice (excerpt)
by Chagdud Tulku
The following excerpt is from Chagdud Rinpoche's "Gates to Buddhist
Practice," the first book of "The Living Dharma Series: The Oral
Teachings of Chagdud Tulku," to be published by Padma Publishing.
To understand how delusion arises, practice watching your mind. Begin
by simply letting it relax. Without thinking of the past or the future,
without feeling hope or fear about this thing or that, let it rest
comfortably, open and natural. In this space of the mind, there is no
problem, no suffering. Then something catches your attention--an image, a
sound, a smell. Your mind splits into inner and outer, self and other,
subject and object. In simply perceiving the object, there is still no
problem. But when you zero in on it, you notice that it's big or small,
white or black, square or circular; and then you make a judgment--
for example, whether it's pretty or ugly. Having made that judgment, you
react to it: you decide you like it or don't like it. That's when the
problem starts, because "I like it" leads to "I want it." We want to
possess what we perceive to be desirable. Similarly, "I don't like it"
leads to "I don't want it." If we like something, want it, and can't have
it, we suffer. If we don't want it, but can't keep it away, again we
suffer. Our suffering seems to occur because of the object of our desire
or aversion, but that's not really so--it happens because the mind splits
into object-subject duality and becomes involved in wanting or not
wanting something.
We often think the only way to create happiness is to try to control
the outer circumstances of our lives, to try to fix what seems wrong or
to get rid of everything that bothers us. But the real problem lies in
our reaction to those circumstances. What we have to change is the mind
and the way it experiences reality.
For it is our emotions that propel us through extremes, from elation
to depression, from good experiences to bad, from happiness to sadness--a
constant swinging back and forth. Emotionality is the by-product of hope
and fear, attachment and aversion. We have hope because we are
attached to something we want. We have fear because we are averse to
something we don't want. As we follow our emotions, reacting to our
experiences, we create karma - perpetual motion that inevitably
determines our future. We need to stop the extreme swings of the
emotional pendulum so that we can find a place of centeredness.
When we first begin to transform the emotions, we apply the principle
of iron cutting iron or diamond cutting diamond. We use thought to
change thought. A negative thought such as anger is antidoted by a
virtuous thought such as compassion, while desire can be antidoted by the
contemplation of impermanence.
In the case of attachment, begin by determining what it is you're
attached to. For example, you might, after much effort, succeed in
becoming famous, thinking this will make you happy. Then your fame
triggers jealousy in someone, who tries to shoot you. What you worked so
hard to create is the cause of your own suffering. Or you might work
very hard to become wealthy, thinking this will bring happiness, only to
lose all your money. The loss of wealth in itself is not the source of
suffering, only attachment to having it.
We can lessen attachment by contemplating impermanence. It is certain
that whatever we're attached to will either change or be lost. A person
may die or go away, a friend may become an enemy, a thief may steal our
money. Even our body, to which we're most attached, will be gone one day.
Knowing this not only helps to reduce our attachment, but gives us a
greater appreciation of what we have while we have it. For example, there
is nothing wrong with money, but if we're attached to it, we'll
suffer when we lose it. Instead, we can appreciate it while it lasts,
enjoy it and enjoy sharing it with others, and at the same time know it's
impermanent. Then when we lose it, the emotional pendulum won't make as
wide a swing toward sadness.
Imagine two people buy the same kind of watch on the same day at the
same shop. The first person thinks, "This is a very nice watch. It will
be helpful to me, but it may not last long." The second person thinks,
"This is the best watch I've ever had. No matter what happens, I can't
lose it or let it break." If both people lose their watch, the one who is
attached will be much more upset than the other.
If we are fooled by life and invest great value in one thing or
another, we may find ourselves fighting for what we want and against any
opposition. We may think that what we're fighting for is lasting, true,
and real, but it's not. It's impermanent, it's not true, it's not
lasting, and ultimately, it's not even real.
Our life can be compared to an afternoon at a shopping center. We walk
through the shops, led by our desires, taking things off the shelves and
tossing them in our baskets. We wander around, looking at everything,
wanting and longing. We see a person or two, maybe smile and continue on,
never to see them again.
That's what life is like. Driven by desire, we don't appreciate the
preciousness of what we have. We need to realize that the time we have to
be with our loved ones, our friends, our family, our co-workers is very
brief. Even if we lived to a hundred and fifty, that would be very little
time to enjoy and utilize our human opportunity.
Young people think their lives will last a long time; old people think
life will end soon. But we can't assume these things. Our life comes
with a built-in expiration date. There are many strong and healthy people
who die young, while many of the old and sick and feeble live on and on.
Not knowing when we'll die, we need to develop an appreciation for and
acceptance of what we have, while we have it, rather than continuing to
find fault with our experience and seeking, incessantly, to fulfill our
desires.
If we find ourselves worrying whether our nose is too big or too
small, we should think, "What if I had no head--now that would be a
problem!" As long as we have life, we should rejoice. If everything
doesn't go exactly as we'd like, we can accept it. If we contemplate
impermanence deeply, patience and compassion will arise. We will hold
less to the apparent truth of our experience, and the mind will become
more flexible. Realizing that one day this body will be buried or
burned, we will rejoice in every moment we have rather than make
ourselves or others unhappy.
Now we are afflicted by "me-my-mine-itis," a condition caused by
ignorance. Our self-centeredness and self-important thinking have become
very strong habits. In order to change them, we need to refocus. Instead
of concerning ourselves with "I" all the time, we must redirect our
attention to "you" or "them" or "others." Reducing self-importance
lessens the attachment that stems from it. When we focus outside
ourselves, ultimately we realize the equality of ourselves and all other
beings. Everybody wants happiness; nobody wants to suffer. Our attachment
to our own happiness expands to an attachment to the happiness of all.
Until now our desires have tended to be very short term and
superficial. If we are going to wish for something, let it be nothing
less than complete enlightenment for all sentient beings. That's
something worthy of desire. Continually reminding ourselves of what is
truly worth wanting is an important element in developing pure practice.
Desire and attachment won't change overnight, but desire becomes less
ordinary as we redirect our worldly yearning toward the aspiration to
become enlightened for the benefit of others. At the same time, we don't
abandon the ordinary objects of our desires--relationships, wealth,
fame--but our attachment to them lessens as we contemplate their
impermanence. Not rejecting them, rejoicing in our fortune when they
arise, yet recognizing that they won't last, we begin to build qualities
of spiritual maturity. As our attachment slowly decreases, harmful
actions that would normally result from attachment are reduced. We create
less negative karma, more fortunate karma, and the mind's positive
qualities gradually increase.
Later, after we've done more meditation practice, we can try an
approach that's different from contemplation, different from using
thought to change thought: revealing the deeper nature, or wisdom
principle, of the emotions as they arise.
If you are in the midst of a desire attack--something has captured
your mind and you must have it--you won't get rid of the desire by trying
to suppress it. Instead, you can begin to see through desire by examining
what it is. When it arises in the mind, ask yourself, "Where does it come
from? Where does it dwell? Can it be described? Does it have any color,
shape, or form? When it disappears, where does it go?"
This is an interesting situation. You can say that desire exists, but
if you search for the experience, you can't quite grasp it. On the other
hand, if you say it doesn't exist, you're denying the obvious fact that
you are feeling desire. You can't say that it exists, nor can you say
that it does not exist. You can't say that it's "both" or "neither," that
it both does exist and does not exist, or that it neither exists nor does
not not exist. This is the meaning of the true nature of desire beyond
extremes.
It's our failure to understand the simplicity of the natural state
that gets us into trouble. No conceptual structure will describe the true
nature of an emotion. We experience it the way we do because we don't
understand its essential nature. Once we do, the emotion tends to
dissolve.
Then we're not repressing the emotion, but neither are we encouraging
it. We are simply looking clearly at what is taking place. If we set a
cloudy glass of water aside for a while, it will settle by itself and
become clear. Instead of judging the experience of desire, we look
directly at its nature, what is known as "liberating it in its own
ground." Then it simply dissolves.
Each negative emotion, or mental poison, has an inherent perfection
that we don't recognize because we are so accustomed to its appearance as
emotion. Just as poison can be taken medicinally to effect a cure, each
poison of the mind, worked with properly, can be transformed to its
wisdom nature and thus enhance our spiritual practice.
If while in the throes of desire, you simply relax, without moving
your attention, that space of the mind is called discriminating wisdom
You don't abandon desire--instead you reveal its wisdom nature.
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Buddhism
In Our Daily Life Lecture 1
China Academic Lectures
Sponsored by
China Institute in America, N.Y. USA
By Dr. C. T. Shen
LECTURE 1:
THE CONCEPT OF BIRTH AND DEATH
In the Christian Bible, in the Book of John, Chapter XVI, Verse
12, Jesus Christ tells his disciples, "I have yet many things to say
unto ye, but ye cannot bear them now." That is to say, what Christ did
teach his disciples was only a small part of what he knew, because the
level of understanding of his disciples at that time was such that
they could only absorb so much. Unfortunately, Jesus died at the age
of 33. Time did not allow him
to give his disciples a complete course of teaching. What Christ knew
and did not say remains an unanswerable question.
On the other hand, Buddha lived for 80 years. He had 45 full
years from the time of his enlightenment to teach his disciples: long
enough to gradually lead his disciples to learn and practice various
stages of teaching, from a self-centered liberation from human
suffering to the most profound supramundane doctrine.
If we assume that these founders of two of the greatest religions
on earth were both persons possessed of profound wisdom, then many
teachings expounded by Buddha could be those which Christ knew but did
not have time to teach.
With this view in mind, it seems to me that the study of Buddhism
by Christians can have a special significance, that is, the search for
what Christ knew but did not say.
The Buddhist concept of birth and death could be a good example
of just such an area of thought. That is why I have said these few
words first.
Now, let me go to the mysterious question which has hung over the
human mind for thousands of years. The question is, "What happens to
one after death?" Practically all systems of political thought and
philosophical ideas, such as Confucianism, deal in
their teaching only with the living. Confucius said, "eve do not even
know the living, how can we know the dead?" From a practical point of
view, it is true that problems concerning the living are more
important and intimate to us, but such an approach evades the search
for a real answer to the question. The fact of death, and the question
as to what happens afterward, remain. Furthermore, it could very well
be that the attitude toward the living could be very much changed if
we knew what happen ed to one after death.
It should be noted that Confucius did not say that death is
extinctions nor did he say that there is no future life after death.
He meant that to live as a decent person on earth is more important
than to search for the answer to life after death.
Most religions, however, have a teaching about life after death.
Two teachings predominate among world religions: one is the one-life
theory and the other is the multi-life theory. The one-life theory
says that birth begins the life of a physical body, wherein a
spiritual entity called the "soul" abides, and death is the
destruction of that body, but of the soul. After death, the soul,
depending upon the judgment of the creator, will ascend to heaven or
descend to hell. Christianity represents this theory. This teaching
ends here, somehow,- and goes no further. The implication is that each
person has only this one life on earth and will thereafter remain
eternally either in heaven, in bliss, or suffering in hell with no
chance of ever leaving. Whether or not this implication represents a
complete understanding of Christ's teaching is unclear. It could be
that Christ had much more to teach about birth and death, but, in his
time, even this limited concept of birth and death was not easy for
people to understand. He did not have time to teach them more and to
bring them to a higher level understanding.
The multi-life theory says that the birth and death of a being is
only one segment of a chain of infinite lives of a being, who wanders
among five major kinds of existence. The five existences are: heaven-
dweller, human being, animal, ghost, and hell-dweller. After death a
human being is reborn into another existence. He or she could again be
a human being or perhaps would be a heaven-dweller, or an animal, or a
ghost, or a hell-dwelIer. by extension, a dweller in hell can also be
reborn as an animal, a human beings etc., and a heaven-dweller can
also die and be reborn as a human being, hell dweller, and so forth.
This change of life form, or existence, goes on indefinitely until and
unless the chain breaks, which occurs when this concept of birth and
death becomes no longer significant to a being.
Hinduism and Buddhism hold this multi-life theory, but with a
major difference in their views, Hinduism sustains the belief that the
concept of birth and death becomes insignificant when the being is
merged with the Brahman--Almighty God. Buddhism says that it becomes
insignificant upon enlightenment, because the concept of birth and
death is no longer applicable. To understand this Buddhist concept, we
must first understand that Buddhism explains world phenomena at two
levels: one is called the enlightened level, that is, realization of
the ultimate truth by the enlightened ones, and the other is called
the mundane level. which can be further divided into the intellectual
level, where most of us here find ourselves, and the common level, to
which the majority of the people on earth belong.
At the enlightened level, the concept of birth and death is no
longer applicable. I shall explain this later. At the mundane level,
however, Buddhism holds the multi-life theory and recognizes the
individuality of a being, which can then be compared with the "soul"
as taught in Christianity and Hinduism. The soul can therefore
maintain its individuality and appear in the form of a human being, or
heaven-dweller, some kind of animal, a ghost, or a hell-dweller in
consecutive lives.
I should point out, however, that the continuation of
individuality does not mean that a physical body will be transported
into the next life, or that everything stored in one's brain, which is
a part of the physical body, will pass into the next life. As a matter
of fact, the physical body changes from moment to moment. Just look at
photographs taken some time ago and you will agree with me. What do
pass into the next life or future lives, and constitute the
continuation of individuality, are the effects of what one's actions
in this present life. This is called, in Buddhism and Hinduism, the
law of karma, which I shall explain in my next talk.
At this point you might like to say, "That is fine, but
(1) please show me the heaven and hell where dwellers in those
existences may be found, and
(2) please prove to me that I existed before my birth and will still
be in existence after my death."
To answer the first question, may I ask, "Do you believe that
your own eyes are capable of seeing heaven or hell?" If someone did
show us heaven or hell, would we not say that it was just an
hallucination, or magic, and therefore not believe it? If you
have studied the electromagnetic spectrum, you may agree with me that
our human eyes can only see an infinitesimal part of the universe. and
that there are so many things our eyes cannot see. A few hundred years
ago, no one could see the whole bone structure of a living human body,
but now we can see it by means of x-rays. We are advancing very
rapidly in the investigation into the microscopic universe and also
into outer space. Who knows? Maybe a number of years from now, some
new detective instrument will be invented that will enable human
beings to see a different wave length from the presently visible light
wave, and human beings may discover that the so-called hell is right
here on earth; or, space instruments will send back some picture of
outer space that could turn out to be one of the heavens or worlds
postulated by Buddha.
With respect to the second question, sporadic records all over
the world have reported that someone, an ordinary person, remembered
his past life, or that others. like certain Tibetan high lamas. could
tell where they would be reborn. But all of these reports do not have
enough scientific proof to convince us conclusively that rebirth does
exist.
I am, therefore, using another approach to see if there are some
phenomena in the universe in which we live that can explain the
concept of birth and death and that may give some clues to this
mysterious question. The ample reason that convinced me that this
approach has merit is that we human beings are no more than a product
of nature and are entirely governed by all the natural laws such as
gravitational force. Therefore, the phenomena that apply to other
natural creations may very well be applicable to human beings.
As I studied the question, interestingly enough, I found a number
of phenomena in the universe which provide good analogies to the
multi-life theory of human existence. The simplest and easiest for us
to comprehend is the multi-form of H2O.
Do we all know. H2O? Yes.
H2O is the chemical formula for water, signifying two parts of
hydrogen to one part of oxygen. The chemical formula H2O does not
change when water turns into vapor - at the boiling point or into ice
- at the freezing point. Nor is H2O different when it appears in a
beautiful, white, crystallized form, which people give the name of
snow, or in minute liquid particles suspended in the air, called fog.
Now a very interesting concept arises. When water disappears and
is changed into vapor or ice, would you not say that at that very
moment, when the concept of birth and death is applied, that water is
dead and vapor or ice is born? Or when snow or ice melts and becomes
water, would you not say that at that instant, snow or ice is dead and
water is born? This is not only true from your point of view, as an
outside observer; it is also true from the point of view of water, if
water is identified only as water. However, if water is not
identified only as water, but also as H2O, then the concept of birth
and death does not apply. H2O remains unchanged when its appearance
changes from water to vapor or ice or vice versa. H2O has not really
undergone "death and rebirth," although its appearance and physical
characteristics may have changed an infinite number of times and
people may have given it many different names. H2O will not undergo
death and rebirth in the future, although its appearance and physical
characteristics will change numerous times until H2O disintegrates
into hydrogen and oxygen, which phenomenon I will explain later.
From this analogy we can see that the multi-life theory as
suggested by Hinduism and Buddhism makes more sense and could be
closer to the truth than might have been apparent at first. I
therefore draw the following conclusions:
1) Equivalent to H2O and its manifestations, such as water,
vapor, snow, fog, or ice, there is something in the universe, which I
refer to as "X', which is manifested in the five forms of
heaven-dweller, human being, animal, ghost, and hell-dweller. In
Christianity and Hinduism, "X" is called the soul. In Buddhism, at the
mundane level, "X" can also be called the soul.
2) The five forms of existence are interchangeable. Thus, a human
being can be reborn as a heaven-dweller, or a ghost, or a
hell-dweller. A heaven dweller can also be reborn as a human being, or
an animal, or a ghost, or a hell-dweller. By the same token, a
hell-dweller can also be reborn into other forms, --including that of
a human being.
3) According to Buddhism, one cannot live in heaven eternally,
nor will one stay in hell indefinitely. Life goes on, with its form
changing continuously. This phenomenon of the continuous flow of death
and rebirth among the five existences is called 'samsara'.
4) The concept of birth and death is only meaningful if one
refers to a specific object. If the reference is shifted to a more
fundamental nature of that object, the concept of birth and death is
not applicable. Water and H2O are an example: water is the specific
object, H2O the more fundamental nature. A golden ring, which is a
specific object, and the raw gold, which is a more basic material,
constitute another good example.
5.) This is important: If one identifies oneself as a human
being, then one does undergo death and rebirth. The same applies to
water if water is identified as water or a golden ring if it is
identified as a golden ring. But, if one identifies oneself as "X",
then here is no death, even when the form of "X" appearing as a human
being is destroyed. From the point of view of "X", there is only a
continuous change of form, while "X' remains unchanged. Again, the
same applies if water is identified as H2O or a golden ring as gold.
Therefore, if we wish to be rid of death; or samsara, the first thing
we should avoid is to identify ourselves as human beings.
Unfortunately, this goes entirely against our will. We are strongly
attached to our identity as human beings, and that is why we are in
samsara.
Now the basic purpose of Buddhist teaching is to enable one to
remove oneself from samsara. Therefore, the essence of Buddhism is to
teach how one can identify oneself with "X'. Furthermore, Buddhism
does not teach us to treat "X" as the soul. because the soul is not
the ultimate and is still subject to death and rebirth, just as H2O is
subject to disintegration into hydrogen and oxygen and reintegration.
Buddhism teaches us to identify ourselves with "X" as interpreted at
the enlightened level. At the enlightened level we are told that "X"
is something incomprehensible to the human mind and that it can only
be realized and recognized by the enlightened ones. If that is so,
then how can we comprehend and explain it? Luckily, in modern science
I do find something that can probably help us immensely to understand
the interpretation of "X" at the enlightened level. This is energy.
In modern science we learn that everything in the universe is a
manifested form of energy. Electricity. heat, light, fire, sound,
chemical reaction, matter, all are different manifested forms of
energy. Energy itself cannot be seen, heard, smelled, tasted, or
touched, but all over the universe its manifested forms, infinite in
number, can be seen, heard, smelled, tasted, touched, or otherwise
detected by human organs. Energy, therefore, can be considered as the
ultimate existence of the universe. It should be noted, however, that
energy is only a name arbitrarily chosen by human beings. The
definition of energy has, in fact, been modified since the word was
first used. So please do not adhere strictly to the dictionary
definition of the word. I may interpret the word differently than do
some scientists. The word energy, as I use it here, is given to
something in the universe that comprises the entire universe and that
cannot be seen, heard, smelled, tasted, or touched by human organs,
but that can manifest itself in numerous forms that can be detected by
the senses. Since it fully comprises the entire universe. it cannot be
increased or decreased, it has no motion. In short, energy is the
universe and the universe is energy.
If you are able to comprehend what I have described above as
energy, then you should have less difficulty in understanding "X" as
explained in Buddhism at the enlightened level. Upon enlightenment,
according to Buddhism, one realizes that one's "X", and only that "X",
comprises the entire universe; that "X" is the universe and the
universe is "X"; that "X" cannot be increased or decreased; that "X"
has no motion, and that "X" can be neither defiled nor purified.
Because "X" is so difficult to explain and to comprehend, Buddhists,
for over 2500 years, have given it many different names, in the
attempt to clarify the concept. The simplest term, in my opinion, is
Original Nature. The word "original" signifies that all world
phenomena are derived from Original Nature, rather than being separate
from it. Unlike the concept of "soul", Original Nature implies no
isolation of the individual. There can be no other entity. This "X"
therefore, is I, myself, is you, is everyone, and is everything. If
"X" is like that, then how can "X" die? How can the concept of death
and rebirth be applicable to "X"? This Original Nature, therefore, is
what one should identify with.
On the other hand, Buddhism males it clear that unless one is
enlightened and becomes Original Nature, one is always subject to the
chain of multi-life and undergoes the endless death and rebirth that
is samsara. Buddhism, therefore, is a teaching that we should look
into seriously because it provides ways and means for us as human
beings to realize and recognize our Original Nature, whereby we can
rid ourselves of the endless and uncontrollable death and rebirth,
which in most cases is the source of suffering.
At the same time I wish to emphasize that in our daily life the
multi-life theory is even more important than the enlightened vision
of "X", because we are not all enlightened and are still subject to
samsara. It can be a terrible mistake if we neglect this multi-life
theory and simply think, "I am the universe and there is no death,"
for when death comes, one will still be horrified.
As a conclusion to today's talk, I wish to introduce the
following views of two of the most important sociological phenomena in
our daily lives. They are:
1) Killing does not mean the elimination of an opponent or enemy,
and the achievement of victory, as one usually thinks. On the
contrary, since only the physical human form is destroyed, the victim
still exists. It is therefore not one's victory, and it could be the
beginning of one's troubles.
2) Suicide does not mean the end of suffering. The physical human
form may be destroyed, but life goes on. The problem could become much
more complicated and serious as a result of this self-killing.
That is why I said in the beginning of this talk that the
attitude of the living could be very much changed if we knew what
happened after the so-called death that we observe. Political
scientists, politicians, and philosophers who ignore this important
question could be making a serious error out of shortsightedness. We
look into this subject more penetratingly in my second talk, The Truth
of Karma.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
This lecture converted from printed to digital format and included in
the MOUNT KAILAS BBS TEACHING Library with permission from
Dr. C. T. Shen
Copyright and all rights reserved by Dr. C. T. Shen
top
Buddhism
In Our Daily Life Lecture 2
China Academic Lectures
Sponsored by
China Institure in America, N.Y. USA
By Dr. C. T. Shen
LECTURE 2:
THE TRUTH OF KARMA
In last week's discussion of the concept of birth and death, the
one-life theory and the multi-life theory were introduced. I also
used a familiar natural phenomenon, the multi-form of H2O, to
illustrate my belief that the multi-life theory taught by Hinduism and
Buddhisn is closer to the truth than the one-life theory. We found
that H2O is a good analogy for the human soul.
Then, we observed that H2O is not the ultimate substance of the
universe. Modern science is gradually concluding that energy could be
that ultimate. This agrees with Buddha's teaching that the soul is not
the ultimate nature of a human being and the Ultimate is something
which is incomprehensible: without duaity, without boundary, without
birth and death, and with no difference from the universe. Original
Nature and Buddha-Nature are two popular names given to this Ultimate.
The famous statement made by Buddha upon his enlightenment was "Every
sentient being has Buddha-Nature".
The vast, boundless, and empty space is usually used as an
analogy to Original Nature to signify the lack of duality and
discrimination of the latter, its limitlessness in both time and
space. Since the ultimate existence of a human being is of such a
nature, then when one is enlightened or recognizes one's Original
Nature, the concept of birth and death becomes inapplicable. Since
most of us have not been enlightened it does not help us too much to
discuss Original Nature at this stage. We first have to establish a
clear understanding of the multi- life theory at the mundane !evel,
which directly affects our daily lives.
To appreciate thoroughly the multi-life theory, one must first
answer an important question which is: what causes such changes from
one form of existence, say, a human being, to another form, say, an
animal?
To help us understand the answer to this question, it is useful
to refer to H2O again. Let us first examine the causes of changes in
the forms of H2O say, from water to vapor or ice to water.
From physics we learn the following chain of
causation:
physical or chemical action -> intangible form of energyc -> change of
activity of H2O molecules -> changes in forms of H2O
This illustration is quite obvious and needs no explanation. I
will just give you a few examples of physical and chemical actions and
you will instantly know that these actions are the causes of water,
vapor, snow, ice, or other forms of H2O. Such actions as radiation
from the sun, setting a fire, passing electricity through certain
metallic wires and dissolving certain chemicals in water are all
familiar exanples of processes that produce heat in differing
intensities and that ultimately change the form of H2O;
According to Buddhism, a similar natural phenomenon is going on
in the universe: that is, various actions carried out by a being in
the past and present, cause a certain kind of intangible force
comparable to heat that causes the being to change from one form of
existence to another. That is why we have the different forms of
heaven-dweller, human being, animal, ghost, and hell-dweller, which
constitute samsara, or continuous life and death.
In Hinduism and Buddhism, these actions bear a common name --
karma. Karma means an action, or combination of actions, by a being or
beings, which produces effects. Those effects, which could be good,
bad, or neutral, determine the future of that being or those beings.
Karmic actions..therefore, are the heart of the multi-life theory,
just as physical and chemical actions are the basic causes of the
multi-form nature of H2O.
I would like to draw this.. comparison to the above mentioned
chain of causation:
Karma -> intangilble force called the karmic force -> effects,
good, bad, or neutral upon activities of beings -> change in the forms
of the being: samsara
This concept of karma plays a very important role throughout
Asia. Asian religions have established a famous universal moral code,
based upon this law, that good deeds produce good effects and bad
deeds produce bad effects.
It should be pointed out that Buddhism gives this moral code
additional qualifications.. According to Buddhism:
(1) The so-called good effect or bad effect is not a judgment nor is
it given as a reward or a punishment by a supramundane authority,
such as God. The good or bad effect produced by good or bad
karma is purely and simply a natural phenomenon governed by
natural laws that act automatically, with complete justice. If God
has anything to do with it, then God must also act according to
the natural law or path. This cause produces this effect. That
cause produces that effect. God would not change the natural path
by his Iike or dislike of a person.
(2) The "good" and "bad" referred to here are not defined by any code
or law created by human beings, unless such a code or law follows
the natural path. For example, when democracy was first devised,
women did not have the right to vote. At that time, women who
complied with that status were considered "good" 'and those who
fought against it were considered "bad." that judgment was
incorrect, however. The "natural path" is that human beings are
all' equal, and thus, the system which gives women equal voting
rights with men is the truly just one. Therefore, those who
opposed the unequal voting system were actually the good ones.
This law of karma, or cause and effect, is so powerful that it
governs everything in the universe except, according to Buddhism, the
one who is enlightened or recognizes Original Nature. Upon
enlightenment, this cause and effect loses its significance, just as
samara, or recurring birth and death, ceases with enlightenment.
Since Original Nature is the Ultimate, there is no one to receive the
effect, whether it is good or bad, and no one to whom any effect can
apply. This unique explanation, taught by Buddha, of the nullification
of the law of karma is very important. I will explain it later.
With this brief explanation of karma as background, let us now go
a step further to see how karma works.
(1) Karmic effects determine rebirth:
In Buddhist texts one may find numerous examples telling what
cause produces what effect. The karma of present and past lives
determines the form of existence in the next life. Generally
speaking, we may outline these karmic effects as follows:
(A) Such karma as honesty, generosity, kindness, compassion, the
relieving of others' suffering, or the creation of major benefits
for others may produce the effect or result of being reborn in
heaven.
(B) Karma such as giving generously to the needy, aiding those in
difficulty, making offerings to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha or
saints in other religions, or giving others knowledge or skills
that will improve their way of life, may cause one to be reborn as
a human being with a wealthy and bright future.
(C) Karma such a saving others' lives, refraining from killing,
relieving others' worries, curing others' illnesses, generously
helping hospitals and medical research, or aiding environmental
improvement may cause one to be reborn as a human being with a
long life and good health, a person to be liked and supported by
many people!
(D) The karma of studying and introducing Dharma and the right
knowledge to others by means of teaching or writing, giving
sincere respect to Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha and the saints in
other religions, or meditating to concentrate on the mind can
produce the effect of being reborn as a human being with wisdom,
intelligence, eloquence in speech, and the qualities of a good
scholar.
(E) Despite such karma as killing, hunting, fishing, doing harm to
others, endangering others' lives, manufacturing or trading
weapons, or robbing, one may be born as a human being again; but
he will have the possibility of a short lifespan, accidental
death, frightening insanity, disastrous illness, etc. However, if
those karmic activities were dominant in the being's life, then
the rebirth will be in the form of an animal or ghost or even a
hell-dweller.
In one of the Buddhist texts it is recorded that someone asked Buddha:
Why are some women ugly-looking but rich?
Why are some women beautiful but poor?
Why are some people poor but with good health and long life?
Why are some rich yet ill and short-lived?
The Buddha's answers were:
The woman who is ugly-looking but rich was.
short-tempered in her past lives--easily irritated and angered but was
also very generous and gave offerings to the Buddha, Dharma, and
Sangha and offered things to many sentient beings.
The woman who is beautiful but poor was, in her past lives, very
kind, always smiling and softspoken, but was stingy and reluctant to
make offerings or help other people.
The person who is poor but in good health and enjoying a long
life was in his or her past lives, very stingy or reluctant to make
donations, but was kind to all sentient beings, did not harm or kill
others, and also saved many other sentient beings' lives .
The person who is rich but often ill, or who is short-lived, was,
in his or her past lives,' very generous in helping others but loved
hunting and killing and caused sentient beings to feel worried,
insecure, and frightened.
The above examples give us some idea why people on earth,
although all human beings, vary so much in appearance, character,
lifespan, health, mental ability, and fate. It is even more
interesting to note how much the circumstances in which a person is
born can influence his or her destiny. Which race, which nation,
which skin color, which era--all these factors make a great
difference. Would it not be more logical to think that something
was going on before one's birth that caused all those effects than to
say that it is purely accidental or even to say that it is God's will?
If a baby has no past life, then on what grounds does God judge
whether to reward or punish that baby by causing him or her to reborn
under different circumstances?
(2) Karma also affects others and produces effects in the present
lifetime as well as in future lives.
"Karmic effect is incomprehensible!" This statement of Buddha suggests
not only the complexity of karmic effects but also the difficulty of
predicting when a karmic effect will mature.
Generally speaking, however, karma is like the action of
lighting a candle. The candle will light the whole room immediately
and will last until it is consumed. Similarly, karma has the following
characteristics:
A) Karma not only affects the doer but also affects others. The
magnitude of the karma determines the sphere of its effect.
B) Most of the karma produces an immediate effect and the effect will
last until it is "consumed." The nature and magnitude of a karmic
action determine the duration of the effect, which may last many
years or may not be felt until some other karmic conditions mature.
(C) Karmic effects can combine and accumulate.
These three points are rather condensed. I do not have time to
give you a detailed description of them. The following examples,
however, might assist you to understand better.
(A) The discovery of electricity by Benjamin Franklin and the
conversion of electricity into light by Thomas Edison changed the
lives of human beings tremendously and the effect is still
growing.
B) An action taken by the U.S. Congress to change the tax law will
immediately affect millions of American pockets. The effect can be
seen by many Americans in their lifetime, and it could also be felt
by them in the next life if any of them happened to be reborn as
Americans.
C) The combined and cumulative karma of the system of slavery used by
many Americans over a long period of time has produced effects
which constitute a major domestic problem in the U.S.
D) The theoretical discovery of atomic energy by Albert Einstein and
the joint effort of all the participants in the Manhattan Project
produced such complicated effects, good and bad, that we are
probably just beginning to realize the significance of these
developments.
3) Comparison of the magnitude of effects of various kinds of karma:
Such comparisons are recorded in many Buddhist scriptures. I
would like to give you some examples to enable you to form your own
ideas as to how you may create karmic effects of greater magnitude.
(A) One day, while walking on the street, Buddha met a beggar who was
a so-called untouchable in the strict caste society of India
during his time. Not only was Buddha friendly with him, but he
accepted the beggar as a disciple in the ho!y Sangha. This action
had a tremendous effect, which was infinitely greater than the
acceptance of a prince as his disciple.
(B) When the monk Bodhidharma went from India to China he was welcomed
by the emperor Lang. The emperor asked him, "What merit do I
have, since I have built so many temples, erected so many pagodas,
made so many offerings to Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, and have
done numerous other virtuous deeds?" Bodhidharma's reply greatly
disappointed emperor Lang. Bodhidharma said, "Your Majesty, there
is none. You have gained no merit. What you have done produces
only wordly rewards, that is, good fortune, great power, or great
wealth in your future lives, but you will still wander around
in samara."
C) In many of Buddha's teachings, he emphasized that to study and
explain to others even a few sentences of his teachings that show
how one can be rid of samsara creates infinitely greater merit than
the effect even of making tremendous offerings to Buddhas all over
the universe in a number equal to the number of grains of sand in
the great Ganges River.
(D) Buddha also taught:
One who makes numerous offerings to Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha,
helps many other sentient beings and does many other good deeds,
and dedicates all the merit accumulated thereby to a purpose of
one's own interest or to the benefit of one's own children or
relatives--such as making more money or enjoying a longer or better
present life or future lives--produces limited effects.
One who does the same good deeds mentioned above but dedicates
all the merit produced to helping and saving all sentient beings
from suffering in samsara receives much greater merit than the one
with selfish purposes.
One who does the same above-mentioned good deeds with no
specific purpose or desire receives infinitely greater merit than
the two cases mentioned above.
4) Karma and free will:
This topic has been often discussed. The question is, "Is there
any room for free will under the law of karma?" A more penetrating
question is, "Might not so-called free will be simply subjective
opinion? Free will is still an effect of certain karma." For example,
suppose a daughter goes against her parents' wishes and decides to
marry a younger man. The daughter might think that that decision was
made by her free will, but under the law of karma that decision could
very well be an effect of her past karmic relations with this young
man and her parents. That she acts with a free will is only her
subjective opinion.
In the United States, people have the freedom to vote or not to
vote. Is this freedom obtained by a kind of free will or is it still
predetermined by karmic effect?
We could find many examples. all of which seem to indicate that
there is no room for free will under the law of karma. Does this mean
that the fate of a person is predetermined by his or her past karma,
that that person has no way to change it? Is this correct? Buddha said
it is not correct. Why and how, then, can one change one's fate?
To help you to understand that one's fate is not entirely
predetermined by one' past karma, I must ask you to recall what I said
before about Original Nature. I said that cause and effect, just like
birth and death, loses its significance at the enlightened level,
because with Original Nature there is no one to receive the effect of
karma, whether it is good or bad. Therefore, at the extreme, when one
is enlightened, the law of karma is not applicable, so all that the
enlightened one does, say, or thinks is from free will or is a
manifestation of Original Nature and is not the effect of past karma.
All of Buddha's teachings aim at this one goal: that is, to
identify oneself with Original Nature. All methods are therefore
designed to enable one to be gradually in harmony with Original
Nature.
Now, Original Nature possesses all kinds of good human qualities,
such as loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity. All these
good qualities could be good karma, which produces good effects.
Therefore, during the process ' of cultivating harmony with Original
Nature, these good qualities will be revealed bit by bit, like an
occasional ray of sunshine penetrating through a heavy cloud. These
revelations are the true products of a person's free will. Because
such free will creates good karma and good karma produces good
effects, which, in turn, are good karma for the next effect, and so
on, a person has the potential to become enlightened, to recognize
Original Nature, and to become a Buddha.
One will thus not only be rid of samsara, but will also gain the
perfect wisdom and compassion necessary to teach other sentient beings
to follow the same path.
Karma is such a vast subject that I could talk for hours without
exhausting the material. Topics like the following could be very
interesting:
(1) Can good karma and bad karma offset each other?
(2) Can karma be erased?
(3) Can the effects of bad karma be minimized by confession or other
kinds of repentance?
With the general idea of karma I have presented to you today, you
may be able to find the answers to those questions.
In conclusion, I wish to emphasize two points:
(1) Good or bad karma will inevitably produce its respective effect.
Our daily doings, speech, and thoughts will affect our future. A
wise person knows, therefore, how to live properly.
(2) Remember that the law of karma stops operating and you become rid
of samsara only by identifying yourself with Original Nature. How
you may gradually identify yourself with Original Nature, and
realize that Original Nature is you, is therefore the essence of
Buddha's teaching, and I sincerely recommend that you study and
practice it.
Among all the hindrances in our cultivation, the greatest one is our
concept of self, which is the core of all our ignorance and suffering.
Next week, we shall attack that core, and, let me tell you, that
core is indeed very, very hard.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
This lecture converted from printed to digital format and included in
the MOUNT KAILAS BBS TEACHING Library with permission from
Dr. C. T. Shen
Copyright and all rights reserved by Dr. C. T. Shen
top
Buddhism
In Our Daily Life Lecture 3
China Academic Lectures
Sponsored by
China Institute in America. N.Y. USA
by Dr. C. T. Shen
LECTURE 3:
THE TRUTH OF SELF (EMPTINESS)
Someone asked me why in the title of this talk I used the word
"emptiness" in parenthesis after the word "self." According to
Buddhism the answer is that "self is emptiness and emptiness is self."
This answer, however, is too simple to comprehend. So before I explain
the subject matter of this title, let me make two remarks:
1) Emptiness or void, as used in Buddhism, does not mean nothingness,
as in "the room was empty after all the people left." It means,
actually, that the Original Nature of everything is emptiness, or
even if the room is packed with people, it should still be
envisioned as empty. Because human language is not adequate to
convey such precise expression, the word "emptiness," which
appeared to be closest in meaning, was chosen by the English-
speaking scholars who first came into contact with Buddhism. The
word does create confusion, but there is no other suitable term in
the English vocabulary.
2) Because the truth discovered by the Buddha upon his enlightenment
was incomprehensible by ordinary human minds, he had to rely on the
language understandable to the people to explain what is
incomprehensible. Buddha's teaching was therefore delivered at two
different levels: the mundane level and the enlightened level. At
the mundane level, the concept of self means there is an
individual. At the enlightened level, however, individual or no
individual, self or no self, phenomenon or no phenomenon, name or
no name, are all merely sophisms. At the enlightened level, one
envisions all people, including oneself, as those "seen" in a dream
or who appear on a television screen. Such visions are therefore
emptiness. Even the term "emptiness" is unnecessary and carries no
real meaning. "Emptiness" is just a term arbitrarily chosen for the
convenience of discussion among people at the mundane level.
The concept of self at the mundane level, nevertheless, is the
biggest hindrance to ordinary people in achieving enlightenment, or,
to put it another way, one cannot achieve enlightenment and identify
with Original Nature without first achieving the realization that the
concept of self is not only an invalid concept, but also a dangerous
concept, because with the concept of self the concept of "that is
mine" is established, and then the attachment of both self and "that
is mine" becomes firmly planted in one's mind; in this way one can
never be in harmony with Original Nature, one can never achieve
enlightenment and be rid of samsara, or recurring birth and-death,
which is the source of suffering.
In today's talk, I will first explain how the concept of self is
formed and strengthened. Next, I shall try to explain, using several
different approaches, how the concept of self is invalid. By
destruction of the concept of self, the concept of emptiness will be
formed. The concept of emptiness is also an attachment. Finally, we
should destroy the concept of emptiness to enable Original Nature
to be revealed. This concept of self has been so deeply rooted in our
minds for so long that it is unrealistic to expect that it can be
eliminated by the time we walk out of this room. It is my hope that
after listening to this lecture your concept of self will not be
strengthened further, and that this lecture will provide you with some
leads that you may find useful in your future cultivation of Buddhism.
According to Buddhism, the concept of self has two major
components: one is the desire for unending life or continuous
existence, and the other is the attachment to one's own view, usually
expressed as "my view." The desire for continuous existence is present
even before birth. The attachment to one's own view is gradually built
up during one's lifetime, although such views are largely influenced
by one's past karma. This concept of self is first conceived through
one's sensory organs. Through them one establishes oneself, even at
birth, as a physical body which is separate from the so-caled outside
world. This concept of self becomes stronger and more and more
important as one grows up. As a result, one finds that one has
established within one's physical body a center of awareness, the
self, with respect to the outside world.
Secondly, because everyone establishes his or her own center of
activity, the perception that the world is composed of different
entities becomes sharpened. Because each enity seeks its own
satisfaction, conflicts of interest develop. This feeling of
separation is further compounded when views differ and each entity
asserts the importance or "rightness" of its own view. This is a brief
explanation of the concept of self. Voluminous Buddhist commentaries
have been written on this subject. What I've just said here is
comparable to a drop of water in the vast ocean. However, the ocean,
as vast as it is, is basically water. So, if we study this drop of
water thoroughly, a good foundation can be built for more advanced
study of the ocean.
We see, therefore, that the physical body of a person is the core
in which the concept of self originates. This concept of self is
further strengthened by all kinds of identifications one encounters in
daily life that increase the separation and isolation of one from
others in the outside world. Some of the most common phenomena by
which one identifies oneself or people distinguish one person from
another are:
1) identification by name
2) identification by appearance
3) identification by voice
4) identification by fingerprint
5) identification by sensation
6) identification by ideology
7) identification by fame
By examining these factors closely, we discover one interesting fact:
that is, they are all related to the physical human body.
These identifications are like the branches and leaves of a tree
with the physical human body as its root. If the root is dug out, then
all the leaves and branches will automatically pass out of existence.
The above statement has, nevertheless, been challenged by a friend of
mine who is a forester. He said to me, "Since you have not had the
experience of taking down a big tree, you do not know that the
branches should be cut off first, then the trunk cut down, and then
the root dug out or pulverized." I certainly could not argue with him;
however, I told him that according to Buddhism there are three major
paths that lead human beings to dig out the root of the concept of
self. These three paths are:
Path 1- Vigorous practice; having the goal of destroying all kinds
of habits one has accumulated, not only during this life since birth,
but also during past lives. The habits referred to include knowledge,
faith, love and hatred, and all kinds of human activities. Ch'an
(pronounced Zen in Japanese) and the example set by the Tibetan
enlightened one, Milerapa, belong to this path. This path is analogous
with the idea of concentrating one's efforts on digging out the root
without cutting off the branches first.
Path 2- Reliance upon the law of karma, whereby the concept of self
can be gradually eliminated and Original Nature revealed through an
accumulation of merit gained by practicing the six perfections
(paramitas), namely, perfection of living (dana paramita), perfection
of moral discipline (sila paramita), perfection of patience (ksanti
paramita), perfection of energetic perseverance (virya paralrlita),
perfection of meditation (dhyana pramita), and perfection of wisdom
(prajna paramita). This path is analogous to the standard method in
forestry of first cutting off the branches and trunk and finally
removing the root.
Paths 1 and 2 are methods of cultivation, but without a sound
theoretical foundation, people can go astray upon reaching an advanced
stage, as in Path 1, and may lose enthusiasm after a certain period of
time, as in Path 2. We therefore need Path 3.
Path 3- Establishment of a theoretical foundation for Paths 1 and 2
through ample learning and penetrative reasoning. In this lecture,
however, I regret to say that I will be able to introduce to you only
very little from each path. Today let us follow Path 3 to see how the
concept of self can be theoretically destroyed so that Original Nature
can be revealed. The next talk will be devoted to Paths 1 and 2, but
also-very briefly and on a very selective basis.
Now let us first examine the seven means of identification that I
mentioned before, to see whether these branches of the tree of "self"
can be removed first.
1) A name is probably the most common identification of a person,
but it is obvious that a name is a poor means of identification.
Not only can a name be changed, but many people can have the
same name, so that branch can easily be cut off. A name cannot
really separate one person from the other.
2) Appearance, including the form of the body, complexion, color,
etc., is also commonly used to identify a person. But not only
does appearance change with age, it can also be changed by
surgery. It may serve a temporary purpose, but it cannot really
be used to establish the concept of self.
3) Scientific experiments demonstrate that each person has a
different voice pattern. An instrument a even been devised by
which a court may identify a person according to a vocal
pattern. But physical damage to the vocal apparatus could change
that pattern, and certainly this means of identification is not
applicable to mutes. Voice, therefore, also cannot permanently
separate one person from another so that each person could be
justified in being called a "self".
4) Fingerprints are commonly used to identify a person but, like
the voice, are not perfect. One does not lose one's concept of
self even by cutting off both one's hands.
5) It is true that sensation, such as pain, delight, and the
apprehension of danger, does alert one to the existence of a
self, but such alertness is usually temporary and simply affirms
the concept of self which one has already in the first place.
6) Ideology is a strong identification of self. It is, in fact,
part of the premise of one's so-called view, which is one of the
two components that form "self." Historians have recorded that
many religious defenders and revolutionaries even put their
ideas, faith, or principles above their lives. Although in those
cases the concept of self as an individual is usually
surrendered to the concept of self as a group, the concept of
self is, nevertheless, strengthened. But ideology can be
changed, and a change in one's ideology does not mean a change
in the individual. The concept of self remains. Thus it is
proven that ideology is still not the core of the concept of
self.
7) Fame is also a strong identification of self. Fame represents
accomplishments, which distinguish one from other persons. Fame
can be very deeply planted in one's mind. It is not surprising
to learn that one of the presidents of the United States heard
people call him "Mr. President" in his dreams. Ego is a term
which represents the strong attachment of a person to such
identification by fame. Pride and arrogance are usually the by-
products. Just like ideology, fame can change overnight.
However, destruction of one's reputation does not,
unfortunately, mean the destruction of the concept of self. This
branch, fame, therefore does not last.
With all branches cut off we are now facing the root of the tree of
"self", that is, the reality of the human body.
More than 2,000 years ago a famous Chinese philosopher, Lao-Tze,
remarked, "My biggest problem is that I have a body." Buddha also
emphasized that the body is the source of all human suffering. So, we
go to the core of the problem. Can the human body justifiably be
called a "self"?
To study this important and fundamental question, let me employ
three analytical methods taught by Buddha. Each method leads to the
conclusion that the physical human body is a manifestation of
"emptiness" (sunyata) and that the term "self" is just a name
arbitrarily chosen by human beings for the convenience of the living
in this world.
1) The first analytical method is by disintegration.
Now please follow my imagination. l am now taking my left arm off
my body. Would you call that left arm C.T. Shen? No. It is simply an
arm. I am now taking my right arm off my body. Would you call that
right arm C.T. Shen? Again, no. I am now taking my heart out. Would
you call that heart C.T. Shen? Again, the answer is no. It is a heart
which can be transplantet into another person and that transplantation
of my heart does not make the other person C.T. Shen.
Now, I am taking of my head. Would you call that head C.T. Shen?
No. It is simply a head. I can take every part of my body apart and
none of the parts can be called C.T. Shen. Finally, after every part
is removed, please tell me where C.T. Shen is. This human body is
simply a temporary assemblage of many parts. It is an aggregate
without permanent nature. It is, therefore, called emptiness
(sunyata). C.T. Shen, or "self", is simply a name arbitrarily chosen
for the convenience of those at the mundane level.
2) The second analytical method is by integration.
Here in this room we have many different individuals. Each one
will say that this physical body is himself or herself; but way back,
even in Buddha's time, philosophers in India and Greece stated that a
human body is no more than a combination of four basic elements,
namely, solid, liquid, gas, and heat. Buddha, using the insights of
his enlightenment, went further to declare that these four elements
can be integrated into one element, which he called sunyata. According
to his description, sunyata is something that is incomprehensible to
the human mind and that is without duality and without discrimination,
and limitless both in time and space, yet is not nothingness. Now, in
the twentieth century, scientists also tell us that solid, liquid,
gas, and heat are all different manifestations of energy, which, by my
definition, as I suggested during mr first talk on the concept of
birth and death, is quite the same as sunyata (emptiness) as taught by
Buddha.
Therefore, not only those who sit here, but also other human
beings, no matter how different they are in form, sex, color, etc.,
can all be integrated into one, that is, sunyata or energy. All
individuals are the same at this enlightened level. "Self" is
therefore simply a concept arbitrarily created for the convenience of
people at the mundane level.
3) The third analytical method is by penetration.
No one will deny that the physical body of any one of us is solid,
or at least appears to be solid; but if we examine it penetratively we
find that this concept of a solid physical body is primarily
established through our visual organ--the eyes. Unfortunately, our
eyes are such poor instruments that they mislead us terribly. Let us
assume that you are seeing a handsome, young man. This is precisely
the information your naked eyes give you in your daily life.
Now what if your eyes are opened to the view perceived by infrared
rays. Here the young man loses his shape as a solid body and becomes
instead a mixture of red, yellow, and green colors in the approximate
shape of a human body. Whether you can still recognize him as male,
young, and handsome is now subject to question.
Now what if you could see the same young man through X-ray vision.
Most likely you do not like looking at him. I certainly do not expect
you to still have the impression that he is young and handsome.
Or what if you could see the same young man examined
microscopically, so that the body is in the form of a molecular
structure. The structure may look beautiful, but you certainly do not
see a handsome, young man.
Undifferentited space represents this young man in formless form,
which is invisible to the human eyes. You may call this form Original
Nature.
May I now call your attention to this important fact: these five
forms are not different entities. They are the same man in the same
spot and at the same instant, but to your eyes they appear to be very
different.
Now, visible light, infrared light, and X-ray vision are only a
few wave lengths among the infinite number of wave lengths in the
universe represented by the electromagnetic spectrum. This young man
can, therefore, appear in an infinite number of different forms at
different wave lengths. That is to say, if we assume that your eyes
are capable of seeing things at any wave length, and not only at the
wave length called visible light, then, as you scan the spectrum, you
are really becoming Alice in Wonderland. The form of this young man
changes momentarily and continuously; there is no one form that is
permanent, nor can any form be considered as real.
Not only can this young man appear in so many different forms,
including the formless form which is emptiness in the ordinary sense;
but every one of us can also appear in all those forms, including the
formless form, or emptiness. At this point, you should note that all
the formless forms of all of us are the same. Now, if the truth is
such, is it not foolish that we adhere so much to the physical body,
which is just one of the infinite forms manifested by Original Nature
and which is used to create this concept of self?
These three analytical methods lead to the conclusion that the
physical human body is impermanent and is a momentarily changeable
form seen by human eyes in a very narrow range of wave lengths. Since
this is the reality of a human body, how is it justifiable to call it
a self, an individual entity? Therefore, there is no self, only
emptiness.
Once, I introduced this doctrine of "no self, only emptiness" to
some of my friends. One friend cried, "If I lose myself and become
emptiness, how can I sell! be alive?" To this question I answered,
"The Buddha achieved this realization that there is no self, only
emptiness, upon his enlightenment at the age of 35 and he lived a
happy life until he was 80 years old." Therefore, the destruction of
the concept of "self," and the realization of emptiness, do not mean
the end of life; on the contrary, this stage is the beginning of the
happy life. I will discuss this more fully in the next talk.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
This lecture converted from printed to digital format and included in
the MOUNT KAILAS BBS TEACHING Library with permission from
Dr. C. T. Shen
Copyright and all rights reserved by Dr. C. T. Shen
top
Buddhism
In Our Daily Life Lecture 4
China Academic Lectures
Sponsored by
China Institute in America, N.Y. USA
By Dr. C. T. Shen
LECTURE 4:
THE SOURCE OF JOY
Let me make it clear, first of all, that the joy I refer to here
is not the kind of temporary joy that can be the cause or source of
later suffering. For example, one does have a sensation of joy and
being carefree when one i drunk, but the actions one might commit
while intoxicated could be so foolish that one might feel deep regret
afterward, or they could cause such irreparable consequences that the
suffering created thereby would be much greater and longer lasting
than the temporary joy that accompanied the drinking. That kind of
joy, if you still wish to call it joy, is classified in Buddhism as
suffering--it is not joy, because it is the beginning of suffering.
The joy I refer to here can be better defined as the opposite of
suffering, or the cessation of suffering: for example, the kind of
feeling one enjoys when one can fall asleep quickly and soundly,
without drugs, after suffering insomnia for many years, or when one is
able to rest after a number of hectic days in a political campaign or
a demanding day in the business world. One might find oneself enjoying
that relaxation in a mountain-lake region. As one gazes at the high,
snowcapped mountains and the huge pine trees, the world and its
worries seem a thousand miles away; one feels so very small yet at the
same time so great that one feels alone in the universe.
In Buddhism, there are several ways to classify human suffering.
The most common is a listing of eight categories of suffering as
follows:
1. Suffering because of birth
Although no one remembers the Pain experienced upon leaving the
mother's womb, the very fact that a newborn baby cries rather than
smiles indicates that there is no bliss at birth.
2. Suffering because of age
Although aging is a slow process that takes place over a number of
years, the sometimes sudden realization of the reduction of youthful
strengths and ability is a painful experience for most people past
the age of sixty. Evidence of this feeling could be found on a visit
to a home for the aged, or simply in speaking to any older person on
the subject.
3. Suffering because of sickness
Very few people can claim immunity to sickness or injury. I do not
have to elaborate on the painful experience of being sick. This kind
of suffering is particularly prevalent among people who live in places
where nutrition and medical care are inadequate.
4. Suffering because of death
The majority of human beings suffer painfully because of their
awareness of the inevitability of death. Such suffering is
particularly severe for those who have a strong ego, great power, or
great wealth, as it is very difficult for them to contemplate giving
up these things.
5. Suffering because of separation from loved ones
Death is considered by most to constitute permanent separation. One
who has had the experience of losing a loved one knows how painful
that experience can be, and the suffering it brings can hardly be
remedied. Heartbreak, worry, the expectation of bad news--all these
kinds of suffering are expressed through grief and tears by those
whose loved-one have been kidnapped, or imprisoned in concentration
camps; who have faced the danger of death, been sent to war, or been
forced into an indefinite period of separation because of political
circumstances.
6. Suffering because of an undesirable confrontation with another
person or thing
Some examples of this kind of suffering might be an unexpected
meeting between two people who hate each other; a beautiful girl being
chased by a man she does not like; suddenly coming face to face with a
robber or maniac; turning a corner and finding a rabid dog or other
animal on the attack--all these encounters can be sources of great
suffering.
7. Suffering caused by denial of one's desires
A child will cry when-he or she wants a piece of candy and the
mother says "no." Other examples are failure to win the heart of the
one you love or failure in business. One can also suffer a great deal
if one needs money desperately and is unable to get it.
8. Suffering because of the burning characteristics of the human body
and mind
In Buddhism, this refers to the five aggregates which form the
human body. These five aggregates are form, sensation, perception,
conditioned function, and consciousness. Examples of the burning
characteristics of these five aggregates, or, as I put it in simple
terms, body and mind are anger, anxiety, excessive sexual desire,
hatred, jealousy--all these can be sources of suffering.
Since the joy I refer to is defined as the cessation of
suffering, it becomes clear, after the description of the eight
categories of suffering, that the root of suffering is, again, our
concept of body and mind. If we do not have body and mind, there is no
birth and therefore no suffering because of birth. Without body and
mind, aging, sickness, death, and the other four kinds of suffering
have no base from which to operate. Therefore, the root of all human
suffering is the human's concept of and attachment to a body and mind.
As in the case of the concept of birth and death and the concept of
karma, the complete cessation of suffering can only be achieved by the
realization of Original Nature, which means the realization that the
body and mind, which appear to our sensory organs to exist, are
changing from moment to moment, are impermanent and unreal, as if one
saw oneself in a dream, or were an actor playing a part - all is
therefore defined as emptiness, or sunyata.
Therefore, the realization of Original Nature means complete
cessation of suffering, means ultimate joy. The conclusion of this
theoretical analysis, which I have earlier referred to as Path 3, is
that our own Original Nature is the source of true joy. May I repeat
that: Our own Original Nature is the source of joy.
Now, this sounds great, but it is just like saying the clear
autumn sky is the source of cheer at a time when the sky is heavier
overcast and it is raining, if not storming. Buddhism is not just
philosophical study. One who knows everything in theory about swimming
but has never practiced in water will still face the possibility of
drowning if he or she falls into deep water. So, Buddhism places
emphasis on practice. To realize Original Nature one must practice
according to those methods that I have called Path 1 and Path 2.
Path 1 is designed for the person who is able to divorce himself
or herself entirely from worldly affairs and to practice vigorously
the concentration of the mind on one point. This method is analogous
to launching a rocket from crowded Times Square in New York City on a
stormy day with thick clouds. Now just imagine how difficult it would
be to fire a rocket under such conditions. Many rockets, even when
launched successfully, probably fall back to earth without ever having
reached the upper level of clouds. Only the ones that have enough
strength to ascend non-stop can penetrate the heavy cloud cover. The
instruments in those rockets that do make it will suddenly detect
bright sunshine and the endless deep blue sky in all directions. At
that time, what the instruments detect is vast space, quietness,
clearness, and emptiness. Crowded and noisy Times Square in New York
City, and even the whole earth, become so small by comparison that
they lose their significance entirely.
A similar breakthrough in the human mind, according to Buddhism,
is called enlightenment. At the moment of enlightenment, Original
Nature reveals vastness, limitlessness, and incomprehensible nature
beyond description. All the habits, desires, discriminations, and
attachments of human beings become insignificant. The concepts of
birth and death, karma, and suffering are therefore inapplicable. One
who achieves this status is called an "enlightened one." Buddha
Sakyamuni - was a human being born about 2,500 years ago in the land
known today as Nepal who achieved enlightenment at the age of 35. He
set an excellent example for all human beings.
As I said before, Path 1 is designed for one who is able to
divorce himself or herself entirely from worldly affairs and to
practice vigorously just like Buddha, who gave up the king's throne
that awaited him and went to the mountains to take up many kinds of
difficult ascetic practices. This is like attempting to dig out the
root of a big tree without first cutting down the branches. It should
be considered as the highest standard set by Buddha that a human being
can possibly achieve. Path 1, however, is not for everyone. Buddha
therefore taught many other methods to enable human beings to realize
Original Nature. I consider that these methods belong to Path 2.
All the methods in Path 2 can be described as aiming at one
principle, that is, "harmony with Original Nature." Here we should
note that the concept of self is still in existence. It is "I" who am
in harmony with Original Nature. In other words, at the stage of
cultivation which I have called Path 2, "I" and Original Nature are,
mentally, still two separate entities. All the methods therefore lead
to a goal of identifying "I" with Original Nature and, finally, "I am
Original Nature and Original Nature is I." There is only Original
Nature. And Original Nature is a term chosen for the convenience of
people at the mundane level.
With this Principle, "harmony with Original Nature," clear in our
minds, every action and every thought in our daily life could offer us
abundant opportunities to practice harmony with Original Nature. At
the mundane level, Original Nature can be more clearly specified as
nonduality, nondiscrimination, and no self; or even more condensed, as
no attachment. Therefore, in our daily life, those actions and
thoughts which can be qualified as nonduality, nondiscrimination, and
no self--or non attachment--are those in harmony with Original Nature.
On the other hand, actions and thoughts that possess duality,
discrimination, and concept of self, and are attached in one way or
another, are not in harmony with Original Nature.
Now I wish to give you a few examples of how to practice in
harmony with Original Nature; They have been useful in my personal
practice. But, since each person has different karma, you may find
another method more effective.
1. Fifteen minutes of meditation on vast space every day
You may look at the open sky on a clear day. Concentrate your
effort to see as far out as you can. If a bird, an airplane, a wisp
of cloud, or any kind of object comes into view, ignore it and don't
let it distract you. If your eyes become tired, close them, but your
mind should continuously "look" at the vast sky without wavering. The
key to this practice can be found in the following verse taken from
The One Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa, by Professor Garma C.C.
Chang:
"Like the sky devote of edge or center,
Meditate on vastness and infinity."
That is the teaching Milarepa gave to his woman disciple, Sahle-
Aiu. It clearly emphasizes nonduality, nondiscrimination, and no self.
2. Fifteen minutes of meditation on energy every day
First, think of the outer skin of your entire body. The skin is
matter and is therefore a form of energy. Then, think of your flesh.
Flesh is also matter and therefore also a form of energy. The bones
are also a form of energy The lungs, heart, stomach -- every part,
from the outside to the inside and then from the inside to the
outside, is a form of energy.
When you first begin this practice, repeat this process several
times. You will reach the conclusion that everything in your body, and
your body as a whole, is energy and nothing else.
Then, whatever you are sitting on is matter and thus energy. The
air is energy. The warmth of the air is energy. Light is energy.
People and animals are energy. The room, the house, the village, the
city, the earth, then, the moon, the sun -- everything in the
boundless space you can think of they are all energy. All are
characterized by non duality and nondiscrimination.
Whenever your mind wavers and cannot keep expanding your vision of
energy, then retreat to the point where your vision of energy is
clear.
Since energy is a good analogy for Original Nature, this practice
can be very effective. It is simple yet in harmony with Original
Nature.
I presume that you all know how to sit for meditation, so I shall
not describe it here. My booklet, "What We Can Learn From Buddhism,"
gives a brief yet complete description of how to sit. You might like
to use it as a reference.
3. Practicing the perfection of giving (dana paramita)
Giving means to help or benefit others. Twenty-five years ago, when
I first came to this country, I had the distinct impression that the
people of this great nation have, in general, a warm generosity and
willingness to help other people. I must admit, however, that that
good impression has been gradually fading in recent years. I sincerely
hope that this trend will be reversed. It is entirely up to each of
you. Don't forget that the social environment is the effect of our
common karma. According to Buddhism, there are three kinds
of giving:
A) To help or benefit others by giving them the things they
need. Food, clothing, shelter, vehicles, money, and many other
items of a material nature are included in this category.
B) To help or benefit others by giving them right knowledge and
correct view. In Buddhism the reference is especially to
Dharma, i.e., the Buddha's teachings because according to
Buddhism, Dharma is the most important knowledge that can help
people to rid themselves of suffering. Broadly speaking, the
teaching of proper knowledge and skill to people to enable
them to be productive members of society is also giving under
this category.
C) To help or benefit others by protecting them from various
kinds of danger or alleviating their fears. This is called the
giving of fearlessness. People who contribute to keeping a
place, say, Central Park in New York City, secure and peaceful
day and night for the citizens are, indeed, giving in this
category. To save people from a ship in distress or from
places hit by earthquakes, hurricanes, tidal waves, or other
disasters, are good examples of this kind of giving. A good
doctor or nurse who comforts a patient who has great fear is
doing meritorious giving.
All of the above is giving, but it may not be the perfection of
giving. You may remember that when we talked about karma, I said at
one point that one who does good deeds with selfish motive receives
limited merit, while one who does the same good deeds with no specific
purpose or desire receive infinitely greater merit. Let me now
describe the perfection of giving, which is one of the six Paramitas
or perfections, taught by Buddha.
Perfection of giving means giving without duality, without
discrimination, and without concept of self. Or, to put it another
way, perfection of giving is giving without any idea as to who is the
recipient, what is being given, or who the donor is. Therefore,
giving conditionally, or with string attached, is a kind of giving but
it is not the perfection of giving.
Giving with an expectation of reward is giving, but not the
perfection of giving.
Giving with discrimination regarding the recipients, such as, 'I
only donate to the church but not to the school,' is giving, but not
the perfection of giving.
Giving for selfish reasons is giving; but it is not the
perfection of giving.
The perfection of giving demands a mind of equality, non duality,
nondiscrimination, and no self. Such giving is therefore in harmony
with Original Nature.
For those who have not achieved the ability to be in harmony with
Original Nature, intensive prayer to a more tangible supramundane
authority, such as the gods of different religions, the Holy Mother
Mary, Jesus Christ, and in Buddhism, Buddha Amitabha and Bodhisattva
Khan Yin the two most popular names, all serve effective purposes when
one is seriously ill, in danger, desperate, approaching death, and so
forth. Such prayer, particularly for those who have had faith in one
or more of the foregoing in their lives, could quickly bring back
their concentration. The unwavering tranquility of one's mind is
itself a process in harmony with Original Nature--the source of joy.
I thank you for your patience in listening so intently during
these four sessions. You have probably noted that the key expression
in these lectures has been Original Nature. It may be helpful to offer
you, as my conclusion, the following quotation from Chapter 9 of The
Holy teaching of Vimalakirti, by Dr. Robert A.F. Thurman, entitled,
"The Dharma-Door of Nonduality":
Then, the Licchavi Vimalakirti asked those bodhisattvas, "Good
Sirs, please explain how the bodhisattvas enter the Dharma-door of
nonduality!"
Thereupon, thirty-one bodhisattvas expressed their views of
nonduality. I quote three expressions as examples:
The bodhisattva Srigandha declared, "I' and 'mine' are two. If
there is no presumption of a self, there will be no possessiveness.
Thus the absence of presumption is the entrance into nonduality."
The bodhisattva Tisya declared, "'Good' and 'evil' are two.
Seeking neither good nor evil, the understanding of the nonduality of
the significant and the meaningless is the entrance into non duality."
The bodhisattva Suddhadhimukti declared, "To say, 'This is
happiness,' and 'That is misery' is dualism. One who is free of all
calculations, through the extreme purity of gnosis--his mind is aloof,
like empty space; and thus he enters into nonduality."
Near the end we read:
When the bodhisattvas had given their explanations, they all
addressed the crown prince Manjushri: "Manjushri, what is the
bodhisattva's entrance into nonduality?"
Manjushri replied, "Good sirs, you have all spoken well.
Nevertheless, all your explanations are themselves dualistic. To know
no one teaching, to express nothing, to say nothing, to explain
nothing, to announce nothing, to indicate nothing, and to designate
nothing--that is the entrance into nonduality."
Then the crown prince Manjushri said to the Licchavi Vimalakirti,
"We have all given our own teachings, noble sir. Now, may you
elucidate the teaching of the entrance into the principle of
nonduality! "
Thereupon, the Licchavi Vimalakirti kept his silence, saying
nothing at all.
The crown prince Manjushri applauded the Licchavi Vimalakirti:
"Excellent! Excellent, noble sir! This is indeed the entrance into the
nonduality of the bodhisattvas. Here there is no use for syllables,
sounds, and ideas."
Dear friends, why have I used so many words?
(the following lines were added after the lecture was delivered on
November 22, 1976)
(At this point, Dr. Shen suddenly raised his voice.)
NOW, ANSWER MY QUESTION, QUICK! QUICK !
(The audience kept silent.)
Excellent! Excellent! We have so many vimalakirtis here.
(The audience then burst into laughter.)
Now you have experienced it. The very moment that you burst into
laughter was the moment that you were in harmony with Original Nature.
Perhaps you would all like to go home now and practice your harmony
with Original Nature.
I thank you very much.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
This lecture converted from printed to digital format and included in
the MOUNT KAILAS BBS TEACHING Library with permission from
Dr. C. T. Shen
Copyright and all rights reserved by Dr. C. T. Shen
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Daisetsu Suzuki
by Richard Lang
http://www.headless.org
All-knowledge is what constitutes the essence of Buddhahood. It does not
mean that the Buddha knows every individual thing, but that he has grasped
the fundamental principle of existence and that he has penetrated deep
down into the centre of his own being.
D.T. Suzuki (1870-1966)
____________________________________________________________________
COMMENTARY
Daisetsu Suzuki can rightly be called the man who first brought Zen
Buddhism from Japan to the West. During his long life he spent a great
deal of time living, travelling and teaching in both the United States and
Europe. A fluent English speaker, he wrote many articles and books
introducing Zen to the Western mind.
Suzuki's own realisation of who he really was, his grasping of 'the
fundamental principle of existence' came when he was 26. He had been
studying Zen for some years but without much success. In 1896, however, he
was selected by his teacher, Soyen Shaku, to go to North America to help
translate the Tao Te Ching. The pressure of his imminent departure
happened to be what was needed. He realised that the Zen retreat scheduled
for just before he was due to leave Japan might be his last opportunity,
in the immediate future at least, of solving the koan he was working on.
(A koan is a Zen riddle whose solution is the simultaneous awakening to
the secret of Zen - one's own true nature.) He therefore threw all his
energies into one final effort.
'Up until then he had been conscious of 'Mu' [the koan] in his mind. But
to be conscious of Mu is to be separate from it. Towards the end of that
sesshin [Zen retreat], on about the fifth day, he ceased to be conscious
of Mu - "I was one with Mu, identified with Mu, so that there was no
longer the separateness implied by being conscious of Mu."
'That was samadhi; but samadhi is not enough: "You must come out of that
state, be awakened from it, and that awakening is Prajna. [Wisdom.] That
moment of coming out of the samadhi and seeing it for what it is - that is
satori." His first words as he was awakened from that state of deep
samadhi by the sound of a small hand bell being struck were: "I see. This
is it." '
[Extract from D.T. Suzuki. A Biography by A.Irwin Switzer. Published by
The Buddhist Society, London. 1985.)
Penetrating deep down into the centre of one's own being one finds a
nameless transparency, an awake space filled by all the world, from one's
own thoughts and feelings and body to the stars in the heavens. This
still, spacious no-thingness is the heart of everyone's being. Thus to
find this no-thingness is to see that one is fundamentally united with all
beings. At root there is only one - the One.
Awakening to the One is primarily a matter of actual seeing, of bare
attention, rather than intellectual understanding - vital as understanding
is. As Suzuki said, "I see. This is it." This seeing is not yet another
state of mind that comes and goes. It is awake No-mind, the ground of
being that underlies and is the source of all states of mind, including
samadhi. The contents of mind come and go in No-mind.
Seeing who you really are does not mean that you now know what everyone is
thinking, or what is going to happen next year. You don't necessarily
develop special powers. (They can be both confusing and a distraction.)
Realisation is simpler and more available than this. What is given in the
present moment - given not to a separate person but arising within the
edgeless space of awareness - is seen to be enough for that moment.
But one glimpse of one's true nature is not enough. We need to stabilise
awareness (which means to continue attending to who we really are, whose
nature is already and always stable). Awakening more deeply to our
fundamental Steadyness, we realise we have never been rooted in any other
place. Deepening this awareness involves all our energies, yet at the same
time it is simply being natural. Growing into adulthood we became
profoundly identified with our self-image. The discovery that this image
is not our fundamental nature takes time to get used to. But this is a
letting go rather than an accumulation of more information. We come to
realise, again and again, that there is at root nothing to achieve,
nowhere to go, nothing to be. As we keep re-awakening to our Original Face
as Zen puts it, to our no-face, our imageless, still Centre - present in
the very midst of our busy lives - we discover this is a natural and
effective way of living. Though we discover there is nothing to do at
centre, and no-one there to do it, we find plenty of activity issuing
forth from this inactivity, this stillness, this absence.
Gradually, each in our own way we discover that living from the Source -
which often feels like living from Not-knowing - has an uncanny wisdom
about it. It can be trusted. Suzuki's lay Buddhist name, "Daisetsu", means
"Great Simplicity". In later years, however, Suzuki joked that it really
meant "Great Stupidity". But this isn't only a joke. It is similar to the
idea of the holy fool. It is what the English philosopher Douglas Harding
calls 'alert idiocy'. Grasping the fundamental principle of existence is
recognising that deep down one knows nothing, yet paradoxically this
no-thingness is the infinitely wise (and loving and dynamic) source of all
things.
Years ago I was in Berkeley, California, and whilst there briefly met a
Korean Zen master whose teaching revolves around the idea of living from
'not-knowing'. My friend introduced me by saying "This is Richard - he
knows about not-knowing." The teacher replied: "Don't say you know about
not-knowing. I don't know about not-knowing!"
D.T. Suzuki lived to the ripe old age of 96. He was well-known for his
industriousness, right up to the end of his life. He was also known for
his deep-rooted warmth and optimism.
Suzuki's last words on his deathbed were: "Don't worry. Thank you. Thank
you."
Richard Lang
Feedback welcome
mailto:headexchange@gn.apc.org
http://www.headless.org
top
Art that is inspired by meditative experience seeks to express the trans-
cendental or subtle worlds to the ordinary sense consciousness, where the
aesthetic experience
arises in the spiritual truth and beauty realized in these sublimated states of
consciousness.
Arts ability to impress on others this spiritual meaning and beauty depends on
the integration
of all elements and developing relationships into a composition which reflects
the essential
unity of spirit and form as propagated out through unfolding spheres of
wholeness.
These statues represent the various forms of Buddhist Deities as they appear in
their subtle,
heavenly realms. The means to self-actualization is the art of becoming, and
here the mastery
of expression is in the perfection of being through the embodiment of the
Divine. This is seen
in the expressions, gestures, postures, and also symbolically represented in the
associated
adornments, supports and surroundings.
To the observer or meditator the physical object serves as a support for
concentrating the
ordinary mind. Due to it's familiarity with the phenomenal world, this gross
mind can focus on
the manifested form (statue) of the Deity more readily. However, through the
inner sublimation
resulting from meditative absorption mixed with insight into reality
(emptiness), the object's
"thingness" (appearance of reified existence) is caused to dissolve, allowing
the mind to
penetrate to a deeper level of significance, thus revealing the inner psychic
meaning that is
resonated through the symbolic, outer form.
Enlightment is represented in art by the quality of illumination. This spiritual
luminance is
often conveyed through the use of precious metals and gemstones, owing to their
lustrous shine.
The rich, warm color of Gold conveys the quality of radiance as light and
vitality, analogous
for the co-dependence of Spiritual consciousness and the life energy of Nature.
Enlightened
Beings are portrayed radiating this golden light-- a radiance that instills
joyful bliss,
creative inspiration, and demonstrates a healing or transformative power. In
comparison, the
silver metals convey white light that is generally associated with the purely
spiritual or
reflective nature of Mind.
Also by analogy, a gemstone can be compared to the transformative sublimation of
form by a
higher principle, similar to the alchemical transformation of the body as a
natural process of
spiritual development. A stone, though composed of the same material elements
can manifest in
varying degrees of refinement; from crude/opaque to translucent, and ultimately
reaching the
highest aesthetic perfection in nature as the transparent, crystalline "jewel"
of such beauty
and brilliance. Further, the diamond(as Vajra) symbolizes the wisdom of the
immutable nature of
Voidness, alluding to the adamantine essence that is the non-dual union of Clear
Light and
Bliss--realizing Voidness.
Religious experience seeks to give meaning to one's existence. This comes as a
feeling of
compassion and love for all creation,along with a sense of the inter-connected
nature of things
or events that follow some Divine purpose. Related to this is the feeling of
community and the
sincere desire to bring happiness and peace within the world. On a psychic
level, unity comes
with integration, and at its deepest level it is played out in ecstatic
communion with a inner
circle of Divine Beings, the personifications of the archytypal or universal
patterns of being.
In the context of incarnation/development of the Divine, the Deities omniscience
becomes their
perfect realm of harmony; whereas the Lord(the [relatively] absolute Self)
assumes a bi-polar
identity that is inseparably bound within the union depicted as the male/female
embrace. This
essence of unity is replicated into increasing orders of multiplicity;an
exponential blossoming
of forms and qualities that expand through a intricate kaleidoscope of design,
where all produ-
ctions are fractional similarities of the essential whole linked in a
interdependent chain of
developments that is tied to the seed of the original mother/father couple. This
is represented
by the symmetrical patterns of gemstone and colored metal designed in the
periphery of the aura
(on the statues).
The world arises as a evolving web of relationships amidst the proliferation of
variety, all
in accord with the law of causal interdependence. Things exist as energies in
different states
of vibration, developing or disintegrating with reciprocating cycles, regulated
by the same
principle laws extending throughout the entire range of manifestation (from
subtle to gross) in
this multi-leveled universe.
Patterns of symmetry demonstrate an equalization of ratios between objects or
forces in space;
or of orders--of a entity organized in dynamic equilibrium between all sub-units
and the unity
of the whole. Yet, what is implied here and only grasp on a intuitive level, is
a kind of holo-
symmetry in the continuum(over life-cycles)of the Deity.
In the context of Buddhism, the perfectly accomplished nature of reality is the
unfoldment of
the Enlightened Mind. In Its refinement every particular quality and every facet
of meaning is
indivisibly linked through fulfilling its significance in completing the whole,
and the essence
of this whole, which is mirrored at every degree, is the unity of Truth and
Bliss.
Truth is that all phenomenon and entities lack a inherently real,
self-originated existence,
but are dependently arisen as a product determined by its relation to the whole,
which is in
itself empty of absolute reality and so inseparable from voidness,(voidness
being this "empty
of inherent reality").
The circle surrounding the Deity has its origin on the subtlest level of
consciousness.Arising
out of the space-like Voidness as a radiance of light (the formational
reflection of the minds
ultimate wisdom)this radiance propagates out in rhythmical pulsations of
spherical waves. Here,
each succeeding level of development arises as a series of symmetrical
spheres(of lower orders)
that resonate at harmonic intervals. They align along an axis intersecting their
centers and
in accordance with a hierarchal arrangement of the planes of consciousness. The
halo around the
Deities head the circle/aura around the body symbolically correspond to this
alignment.
Oscillations in the dualistically engendered, polarized principles (the mutually
dependent,
relational qualifications of specified energy) generate currents of force
transmissive of
vibrational waves which ripple through the environment--mutually
inter-penetrating to develop
the field of interference patterns-- to effect and be effected by surrounding
systems.
The attraction of similar energy qualities enhance certain currents that
crystallize into the
lines of force which define form and how substance is shaped. In an ideal world
these lines of
force will emerge in accordance to geometric ratios of symmetry and represent
the stabilizing
harmonics latticed throughout the sphere(realm).
This then is the matrix of the mandala principle, understood as the archytypal
constellation
for wholeness, and as the balance of all complementary opposites in the
encompassment of an
essential, non-dual unity. In this context, union is of Clear Light Mind
expressed as infinite
space,(similitude for Voidness), and radiance,(clear appearance or perception of
reality); and
Great Bliss as peaceful constancy through complete harmony of being based on the
subtle vital
energy, channels and essence(drops)-- referring to the enduring, blissful
pleasure engendered
in the concentric dissolution and concentrated sublimation of the vital
substance/force into
the finest medium of vibration- the interfusion of forces in the core state of
quintessential
purity.
Lying in the center of It's realm, the Deity confers initiation by dispersing a
radiance of
transmissive, subtle energies that unfold the Mind of Enlightment. As
manifestations of the
purified elements, these energies coalesce into the Realm of the Deity, forming
the aura(atmo-
sphere) and precipitating out the environment.
The more rarefied elements are represented in the inner portion of the auras as
the multi-
colored waves. Colors can convey different aspects of experience in that the
various rates of
vibration of a given energy system manifests at 'tones' that qualifies their
characteristics.
In this sense radiance can come in the aspects of knowledge, psychic abilities,
inspiration and
creativity, vital power or emotional charisma.
At a more extended stage of incarnation the various emanations of the Deity are
deployed
for the benefit of all beings. They represent the manifestations and activities
of the Buddha
Nature-- the crystallized Divine qualities, virtues, spiritual power or
attainments as the
actualized form of the Deity. Manifesting as a effluence of splendor, here they
are symbolized
by the jewels and adornments, both on the Deity and in the aura.
The concentric rings of flowers, jewels and rainbows seen in the auras represent
the bound-
aries which define each graduated level of consciousness, from coarse to subtle.
To the
practitioner who enters the mandala they represent the thresholds to initiation
in realizing
the inner, sacred space.
Taken in the context of tantra, the mandala is a series of initiation cycles
that revolves
around the meditative practices of dissolution/in-foldment and generation/unfoldment.
At the
heart of this rhythmical alternation lie the axis of psychic centers, where
through the circu-
lation of vital energies are transversed in a serial circuit derived from cycles
of wholeness.
The major centers, in their unfoldment of primary qualities, are the positive
reflex of this
evolution, while simultaneously implicate of their ultimate dissolution into
ethereal space.
A inward directed movement is necessary to overcome all obstructions or blocks
to enlightment.
Bypassing the coarser surface consciousness by concentrating energy on the focal
points (seats
of generative seed consciousness supported on nodules of essential substance[of
Bliss]) leads
to stabilization on a subtler level.
The dissolution of the coarser forms of manifestation (karmic knots), through
contemplating
the wisdom realizing emptiness,liberates psychic energy which can be made to
flow into the axis
channel, whirling in towards the center as a vortex of sublimation. Alternately,
consciouness
is generated in the form of the Deity and surroundings, arising with It's
identity of immensity
,luminosity and beauty. Initially, it is merely a similitude, yet through
repeated cycles the
the gradual transformation is consummated when the very subtle energies are
actualized in favor
of the coarser ones.
Toward a
Buddhist Philosophy of Science: What is Science?
Philosophy of Science
Science and Society
Science and its metaphysical foundations are of crucial importance today. The
technological transformation of the world, guided by scientific principles, is
an ongoing process of staggering impact. These principles are applied not only
to blatantly mechanical systems such as automobiles, but also guide our thinking
and acting in social situations. A clearer understanding of the nature of
science can help us with many key contemporary issues.
Our actions today are creating problems of ever greater magnitude for which we
do not have clear solutions. Examples include the accumulation of nuclear
wastes, changes in the atmospheric composition due to industrial by-products,
depletion of non-renewable resources such as petroleum, depeletion of
potentially renewable resources such as fresh water, and extinction of
biological species. Our actions that create these problems are so tightly
interwoven with our way of life that to avoid these actions would require
major changes in that way of life. Thus we are faced with a very high stakes
decision. A key factor in that decision is an estimate of future growth in
human knowledge and capability. Is it wise to choose a course of action that
relies on substantial future scientific and technology progress to avoid
catastrophic consequences? Can we rely on science to come to the rescue?
Sometimes scientific evidence appears that points out the need to take
unpleasant action in order to avoid some potentially severe negative result.
For example, there is evidence that global carbon dioxide emissions must be
reduced dramatically if negative climatic changes are to be avoided. How
strong must scientific evidence and consensus be in order to make such
difficult choices? Does science ever reach absolute certainty about
cause-effect relationships in the world? Does the need for further research
ever stop? If the scientific debates continue endlessly, how can science be
used to inform decision making?
Science generates knowledge which enables action through development of
technology. New knowledge can give us new capabilities to perform destructive
actions, or actions with very uncertain consequences. For example, advances in
biotechnology such as genetic engineering give us the power to introduce new
species. We may also be able to genetically engineer human beings. If we
decide we do not want to perform certain classes of actions, should we avoid
generating scientific knowledge that could enable those actions?
Once technology has been developed with great destructive potential, such as
nuclear weaponry, is it wise or practical to attempt to restrict the
dissemination of the scientific knowledge that provides the basis for that
technology? Won't independent scientific progress just regenerate that
knowledge? On the other hand, technology can be developed with great positive
potential, such as a new medicine. Is it necessarily unethical to restrict the
use of that technology or to restrict the flow of its underlying knowledge,
e.g. to protect the profits returned to the investors who funded the
development of that technology? Can it ever be good or right to block the
spread of truth?
The generation of scientific knowledge itself involves performing a variety of
actions. These actions may be expensive or ethically negative. For example,
many scientific experiments involve pain, sickness, or untimely death for
human or animal subjects. Projects such as interplanetary expeditions involve
huge government expenditure. What is a wise, appropriate price to pay for
scientific knowledge?
Institutional decision making is informed by a variety of expert opinions. The
authority given to these experts is often derived from their credentials
acquired in the scientific community. For example, scientists give expert
testimony in judicial proceedings. How should the authority of scientific
expertise be weighed against other sources of expertise? How much danger is
there of such power corrupting the validity of scientific credentials? How can
we protect ourselves against this danger?
Not all knowledge is scientific. Other institutions cultivate and transmit
knowledge, most notably religious institutions. These different bodies of
knowledge are generally not mutually consistent. Scientific and religious
institutions often view each other's knowledge as being invalid. Can a healthy
society support multiple inconsistent bodies of knowledge, or must such
conflicts be resolved in favor of some single self-consistent body of
knowledge? Should invalid knowledge be tolerated? Should non-scientific
knowledge be tolerated?
Not all institutions that claim to be scientific are in fact scientific.
Indeed, scientific institutions somtimes suffer lapses such as fraud. How can
valid scientific knowledge be distinguished from fraudulent or false science?
What is Science?
Science is a complex human enterprise, involving many activities such as:
a laboratory technician figuring out what's wrong with a piece of equipment
and how to fix it
a scientist deciding which data to include in a research paper and how to
interpret it
a scientific journal editor consulting with referees on whether or not a
submitted paper merits publication
a faculty committee planning the undergraduate curriculum, which topics need
to be covered and what order will work best.
corporate managers weighing potential return on investment from various
possible research and development efforts
These activities leave their marks on the world, from the scientist's immediate
surroundings with journals lining library shelves and laboratories filled with
equipment and materials, to industry with equipment and materials on a much
larger scale, to the world at large with the pervasive presence of technology
and its byproducts. The effects of science are not merely material - science
transforms human experience. Our outlook is not only changed by the broader
range of experience enabled by transportation and communication technology. We
live surrounded by ever more sophisticated machinery whose behavior constantly
trains our perceptions and expectations. The ideas about the world developed by
scientists are widely taught in schools and popular literature and have become
an integral part of human culture around the world.
Science and technology have made spectacular progress since the scientific
revolution 300 years ago. Physics outines the detailed structures of atoms and
stars. Biochemistry traces the contruction of proteins from their DNA blueprint.
Technology based on science puts men on the moon and ten million transistors on
a chip. Given this solid track record, what room is there for questions about
the nature of science?
To be able to do a thing successfully does not imply a thorough understanding of
the processes that participate in that doing. The best scientists in the world
don't understand the complex physiology engaged in a basketball shot, but that
doesn't get in Michael Jordan's way! A key tactic in science is specialization.
A scientist studying the structure of bat's wings is not liable to be very
knowledgeable about stellar evolution. Disciplines such as psychology and
anthropology study human behavior and social institutions, but have not achieved
the level of reliability and predictability achieved in the physical science,
due in part no doubt to the complexity of the object of study. Science however
is a manifestation of human behavior and social institutions. A thorough
scientific understanding of science is a very tall project! The best
psychologists and anthropologists might have some small inkling of what is going
on with science. Just like Michael Jordan probably knows very little about the
anatomy of the optic nerve despite being a skilled user of that apparatus, it is
unreasonable to expect an expert in aerodynamics to have a particularly
enlightened understanding of how science works. Our great accomplishments in
science do not imply any similar depth of understanding of the nature of
science.
Metaphysical Foundations
My main focus here will be on relationship between the scientific description of
the world and the world itself. The scientific description includes raw records
of experimental data, theoretical formulations of the general structure of
phenomena, and everything in between. It is embodied in scientific journals,
operating manuals for laboratory equipment, notebooks, chalkboards, videotapes,
and the evanescent vocal performances of scientists in lecture and dialog. This
description is constantly evolving as scientific activity proceeds. One simple
and common notion of science is that this evolution is progressing or could
progress toward some ultimately ideal description, a description that would be
perfectly satisfactory. Much scientific activity is focussed on finding and
fixing errors in the current scientific description. The ultimate description
would have no errors, so no more fixes would be needed. Is a perfectly
error-free description of the world possible? If not, can a description be
created all of whose errors can be safely and comfortably neglected? If all
descriptions are alike in being erroneous, is there any valid criterion for
selecting a description to guide action in the world?
The discipline of philosophy of science has developed around various ways to
address these questions. This being a specialized discipline, most people, even
most scientists, are unaware of the variety of positions taken by the various
schools. Occasionally results or controversies will spill out into the public
eye, as with the current "Science War" debates, triggered by books such as Gross
and Levitt's Higher Superstition. Ultimately a Buddhist philosophy of science
could add a new and valuable voice to this conversation. This will require
responses to each of the principal positions held by the various philosophies of
science. What I hope to do in this essay is merely outline some of the basic
difficulties that any philosophy of science must address, and to indicate how a
Buddhist perspective can contribute positively.
The Relevance of Buddhism
The Buddhist tradition is over 2500 years old. Certainly when Shakyamuni Buddha
taught, he did not discuss differential equations, quantum fields, quarks, etc.
Nor did he discuss the scientific method, laboratory procedures, peer review,
etc. So it might seem that Buddhism wouldn't have anything substantial to say
about science. But both Buddhism and science grow out of questioning and
examining the nature of the world and our existence. Buddhist philosophers
starting with Shakyamuni Buddha have closely examined the role our ideas about
the world play in the ongoing evolution of our experence in the world.
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