The role you play.
For a short while I worked in an industrial operation alongside a woman who said she was a sole parent with some boys who had now grown up. She said she was a Christian and this gave her strength and purpose. She had an urgent, determined nature, always sure she had to do what she was doing. She worked hard, with a tendency to take on other tasks which weren't part of her role, become distracted, leaving some main parts undone. She would abruptly intercept and take charge of other tasks that were in front of you to do in your routine, or interrupt your assigned task as her own needs demanded. She would inordinately give parts of her work to you in a belief she was helping the job get done. I could see she was acting as devoted parent who knew what was best for the family.
As far as an industrial operation is concerned, someone who works hard is an asset. Management don't care too much about the relationships between people, or their psychology, as long as the work gets done. Although there is a clear industrial operation, in which one would think all are able to equally function accordingly, it is the image of working capacity, of work performance which is traded competitively between the individual and authority. This of course affects the relationship between the people. The constant jockeying for success, for merit, pitted against one another, is disrespectful, disturbing, violent.
Although work is considered to be a good, sensible, practical, virtuous activity, the focus on effort, purpose, self, means there is no actual relationship between people. That is not to say making a living is wrong, bad, but to see that within the mind there are conditions of thought, belief, habit, which unnecessarily conflict with harmony. People say hard work never hurt anyone, but the mind trying to reconcile the disorder, disharmony, causes stress, disease, and insensibility. There is fear. Fear of being destitute. That is in the mind. To live without love, that is the only destitution.
A circumspect foundation of life.
What is a question? it's not some thing real. It's not a thing.
We are working within thought. Yet we pursue a question seriously,
intently, religiously and do this for our whole lives, talking to
people and asking questions. We have to be clear that there is this
habit which for most people, throughout history, has been considered
worthwhile, rewarding, productive, creative. I don't. While I see
it as a waste of time and effort I am not going to then spend my
time dissuading people from this action. In any case they have an
answer, a verbal response to defeat what they see as my opposing
view, if not clueless, view. They just feel more justified in
parading thought out as a virtue, elaborating the ideas which are
believed to be empowered with insight, intelligence. Thought is
within the mind, memory. There are myths, stories, beliefs,
parables, ideologies and so on, which one can take to speak of a
grander, supernatural scheme, but it is thought. Why would I want
to listen to these? Intelligence is not a product of thought. I
don't mean intelligence as some extra ability, something I am aware
of and need to convey to others. If not for the
verbal preoccupation, the busy thinking mind, is there a natural aspect
to everyone's life? I can't say. What we are doing here, as I see it, is negating
that tendency of mind to be occupied in thought by seeing the
futility of thought. And that seeing, observing, what do we call
it, obviously can not be through ideas, thought. That doesn't mean
we can't use words, but surely the first point is that conceptual
thought, those clever ideas, theories and so on, don't need
discussing; they just don't need to be introduced. When it is all
about expressing concepts and looking for dissuasion, counter point,
which can be positive as well as negative, there is no basic
beginning; No relationship
When I sat down to first meditate it was to deal with the overwhelming emotional, mental, disturbance I was experiencing. My intention, desperately, was to find out what was happening, as the expression goes, once and for all. Gradually, patiently, by not holding on to the thoughts, I watched the passage of memories, impressions, presumptions, desires, regrets, and discovered that they had a continuity far beyond my personal experience, and my petty association. I found that there was something to learn in this dying to the identification. But my motive was simply to be free of the my inner turmoil. So I didn't think of meditation as having a purpose, it was a tool. Do we think of football as having a purpose? We usually use the word in the context of what one is doing. Rarely do we say the dog had a purpose. Or, the room had a purpose. We might say there was no purpose to swimming. Meaning the potential swimmer had no interest. So I assume I have a purpose, or not. But it is interesting how we confuse the activity with what I is doing. That seems to be the point. Yet most people would say I do such and such because I need to, or I enjoy it. They see no point in making the distinction between I and the activity. The underlying state of mind of that particular I, you, me, may be quite disturbed, fearful, having relief by that process of temporarily submerging their selves in the activity. For the most part we endure suffering. We endure, well or badly, all of the various things we call life. There is little serious interest in actually ending suffering.
Say someone is among people who talk deeply about philosophy,
psychology, wisdom and so on. An inquiry begins in such traditions
of knowledge and even though some do not accumulate this knowledge,
for the participants there is this level of knowledge. Then someone
comes to these talks actually without the knowledge. However simply
listening to what is said there is an understanding. There is an
ability to see what the point is, and for good or bad, no ability to
extend the discussion, other than to see the point, apparently what
the people are talking about. This looking at the point, in an
unknown process, with no accumulation of thought, produces insight,
or some kind of clarity of mind. This is an unknowing mind, so it
apparently undermines the basic assumptions which the people were
developing. Yet curiously those very basics are not clear to
anyone. That is not to say they need explaining, or are necessary,
but that they are not recognised as being present as the source of
their processing. The essential basics, which cause the talk, have
an effect of more talk to make them clear, while the more talking,
carifying, explaining, distracts from the essence. The essence is
not knowledge. This is what some call God, spirit, life force. Not
talking about organised religion, cults, belief systems, and so on,
nevertheless I begin with this understanding, that there is a life
force, and by clearing away the cluttered, busy, mind, a life
energy, unlimited, infinite, permeates us all. Talking about the
distracted mind and negating it, without accumualting more thought,
the essence is there. Isn't that the point? I don't say this to be
contentious. I am wondering are you talking with an interest in an
essence, or what ever it is, or is this an assumption, which
misleads one? Without presuming authority do we need to understand
together that with the negation of a distracting mind, there is an
essential being unlike that which we call individual? Or is it just
there!
What you listen to.
I was watching TV and I saw a religious program where a man was talking about the Kingdom of God. Listening to him speak I could understand that he was talking about spirituality, and about being religious, in a world which distorts, confuses, takes control of people. He said he was not speaking about religion, except as a comparison to the authority of the king. What he was saying was interesting because it pointed to the sacred and that it needed no support, no compliance, no agreement. An uncontaminated being was there but for our distraction in our petty lives.
I realised a truly religious person would say this, and that they could point out the confusion in religion, in the following of saviours, saints, leaders. A religious speaker, speaking from truth, with no self interest, tells us about a life living freely, without subjugation. You could see that the audience felt this empowerment. Although, what no one sees, including the religious speaker, is that it is self-empowerment, and is subject to the condition of the self. In effect, even when we are independent, not participating in an organised, institutional, religion, referring to no figure head, not following some program, we only realise this freedom in terms of ourselves.
What understanding we may gather from the religious speaker, what gives it is authenticity, is the living without the petty, fragmented, selfish accumulation and repetition. For a moment, we see a truth, then we believe we can live this lifestyle to some degree, and apply this inner belief to the outside world. No matter how the spirituality, the wholeness, sacredness, is put, we have to also talk about the affect of self, of I. Seeing oneself as an inner state within an outer world is the illusion of self. The inner and the outer is frustration, dis-empowerment, conflict. It is the self which is the distortion, confusion, and limitation we suffer. To most ears this shift in the talk, away from empowerment, from glory, onto a serious examination, is arduous, boring, or simplistic.
Is there a problem?
There is the individual
I, the person who has a name, a life, and there is I within each of
us which is universal, a deeper I, which is all of us, humanity.
This is just by the way. I am not making a case out of it. When
talking about I, am I thinking about the deeper, universal I? Of
course, I am the writer, the speaker, who is an I, and for a writer
it is the first person singular. Normally, in daily life, the use of
I is subjective. It is my thoughts, my ideas, my worries, my
pleasures and so on. But reading what is written here is it the
normal I or is it a deeper I? What I mean is, is it a shared I, one
common to you and I, that is not just me, and separately, you? Is
it touching on something universal, where there is no separate,
individualised I? That's what I talk about. In the use of language
there is a problem with the names, the words, such as I, which I am
dealing with as I go. So to the reader, please share in the
dialogue, moving together in language, but it is not about personal
discussion, where someone is maintaining a separate, individual I.
Good advice and understanding are not what I am talking about. Now I can see that in the ordinary course of talking together, there is this positing of roles, which seem good natured, helpful, instructive, asking questions from the point of view of the unknowing, and so on. But I question the merit of it all. The I is you and me, and it is there within, alone. Just watch, listen. That leads us to discuss duality, but I don't need to give examples. I am that.
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