Alan Watts: Spontaneous Occurrence

In pursuing spiritual disciplines such as yoga, Zen, and also psychotherapy, there arises a difficulty. This difficulty lies in wanting to find a method whereby I can change my conscious­ness and improve myself. But the self that needs to be improved is the one that is doing the improving, and so I am rather stuck. I find out that the reason I think I believe in God is that I hope that some­how God will rescue me. In other words, I want to hang onto my own existence and feel rather shaky about doing that for myself, so I hope there is a God who will take care of it. Or I may think that if only I could be loving, I would have a better opinion of myself. I could face myself if I were more loving. So by some gimmickry the unloving me has to turn itself into a loving me. This is just like try­ing to lift yourself off the ground with your own bootstraps; it can­not be done. That is why religion, in practice, mainly produces hypocrisy and guilt, due to the constant failure of these enterprises.

People study Zen, and they say that getting rid of your ego is a superhuman task. I assure you it is very, very difficult to get rid of your ego. You have to sit for a long time, and you are going to get the sorest legs. The biggest ego trip is getting rid of your ego, and of course the joke of it all is that your ego does not exist. There is nothing to get rid of. It is an illusion, but still you ask how to stop the illusion. But who is asking? In the ordinary sense in which we use the word "I," how can I stop iden­tifying myself with the wrong me? The answer is simply that you cannot.

The Christians acknowledge this by saying that mystical expe­rience is a gift of divine grace. Man, as such, cannot achieve this experience; it is a gift of God, and if God does not give it to you there is no way of getting it. That is solidly true, since you cannot do anything about it because you do not exist. You might say that is pretty depressing news, but the whole point is that it is not depress­ing news. It is joyous news. There is a Zen poem that talks about "it," meaning the mystical experience, satori, the realization that you are, as Jesus was, the eternal energy of the universe. The poem says, "You cannot catch hold of it, nor can you get rid of it. In not being able to get it, you get it. When you speak, it is silent. When you are silent, it speaks."

This phrase—not being able to get it, you get it—is the feel­ing Krishnamurti tries to convey to people when he says, "Why do you ask for a method? There is no method. All methods are simply gimmicks for strengthening your ego." How do we not ask for a method? He answers, "In asking that you are still asking for a method." We think this is so sad, but it is not. This is the gospel, the good news, because if you cannot achieve it, if you cannot transform yourself, that means that, the main obstacle to mystical vision has collapsed. That obstacle was you. What happens next? By now you are at your wit's end, but what are you going to do—commit suicide? Suppose you just put that off for a little while, and wait and see what happens. You can­not control your thoughts, and you cannot control your feelings, because there is no controller. You are your thoughts and your feel­ings, and they are running along, running along, running along. Just sit and watch them. There they go. You are still breathing, aren't you? Still growing your hair; still seeing and hearing. Are you doing that? Is breathing something that you do? Do you see? Do you organize the operations of your eyes, and know exactly how to work those rods and cones in the retina? Do you do that? It happens, and it is a happening. Your breathing is happening. Your thinking is happening. Your feeling is happening. Your hearing, your seeing, the clouds are happening across the sky. The sky is happening blue; the sun is happening shining. There it is: all this happening.

May I introduce you? This is yourself. This is a vision of who you really are, and the way you really function. You function by happening, that is to say, by spontaneous occurrence. This is not a state of affairs that you should realize. I cannot possibly preach about it to you, because the minute you start thinking, "I should understand that," the notion that "I" should bring it about arises again, when there is no "you" to bring it about. That is why I am not preaching. You can only preach to egos. All I can do is talk about what is. It amuses me to talk about what is because it is wonderful. I love it, and therefore I like to talk about it. If I get paid for it, it is because sensible people get paid for doing what they enjoy doing. My whole approach is not to convert you, not to make you over, not to improve you, but for you to discover that if you really knew the way you were, things would be sane. However, you cannot do that. You cannot make that discovery because you are in your own way so long as you think "I" am "I," so long as that hallucination blocks it. The hallucination disappears only in the realization of its own futility, when at last you see that you can­not make yourself over.

Powertalk.cz: Rozhovor s Annou Hogenovou
http://www.powertalk.cz/rozhovor/Anna_Hogenova

To, že každý člověk je schopný čehokoli, platí také na druhou stranu. Každý, úplně každý člověk, dokáže být milující, věrný, soucitný a duchovní. Hlavní náplní mého studia lidí bylo hledání toho, co v nich rozhodne, jakou roli si právě teď vyberou…

» Blog Archive » Vzpomínky tantrika první jednání
http://www.aurarelax.com/wordpress/?p=1497

If we look for wrongness in our world, our body, or our perceptual continuum, we can only designate this wrongness according to some sense of ‘rightness.’ There has to be some sort of nonproblem or utopian concept of how things should be. Intuiting utopia could be construed as an intimation of the enlightened state, but we conceptualize utopia in terms of rejecting the reality of our actual condition and thus we merely create another dualistic construction. It is dualistic because we would be projecting a theoretical pure/impure structure onto reality. This might temporarily distract us from the sense of dissatisfaction we experience, but it would merely reconstruct itself through its own need for polarization. Ideas that contrast pure and impure are one mode of perception, but they do not constitute the only way of understanding reality. If we stepped outside the framework of polarities such as sin and sanctity, worldly existence and heaven, pain and release from pain, ignorance and knowledge, confusion and clarity, samsara and nirvana, we could glimpse a vision of our sentient situation in which reality existed outside of polarized parameters.

-- Ngakpa Chögyam & Khandro Déchen: Roaring Silence

"The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes — ah, that is where the art resides."
Artur Schnabel, rakouský pianista

Něco zpochybňovat neznamená jen pochybovat o tom, (ještě) si tím nebýt jistý, provokovat nové souvislosti nebo stanoviska. Něco zpochybnit - to je také: zdůvodnit otázky jiným způsobem, překódovat je a orientovat tak, aby se mohly týkat jiných životních souvislostí a jiných kulturních kontextů.

S.D.Sauerbier/Revue Rendez-vous Aneb: O vázání uzlů/Fluxus aneb dlouhý příběh s mnoha uzly - Fluxus v Německu 1962-1994

"What brings illness is the thought of illness rather than the illness itself."

- Hazrat Inayat Khan (Sufijsky mystik)

''objectively lookin at the world, y'know what y'all? Your the only people alive on the Earth today, all the people that created tradition, created countries, and created rules, them fuckers are dead. Why don't you start your own world while you got the chance.''

Bill Hicks

význam většiny veřejných institucí spočívá v tom, udržet občana v tak hluboké průměrnosti, aby si dal vládnout.
- Nicholas Sebastien Chamfort (1741 - 1794)

Naše problémy nespočívají v tom, že bychom neměli kvalifikované odborníky, kteří by nám řekli, co je potřeba udělat, ale že neděláme to, co víme, že je potřeba udělat.

Anything you hold onto as a "security blanket" (a job or relationship you keep out of fear) is actually an insecurity blanket. Let it go.—Martha Beck

Stejný zdroj:

(pozorování 17-měsíčního dítěte:)

Narozdíl od dospělých se nezabývá tím, jak se vyhnout všemu nesnadnému a neznámému. Snaží se získat zkušenosti, objímá život. Když pozoruji toto dítě, mohu jen těžko uvěřit rozšířenému názoru, že by se děti nic nenaučily bez vnějších odměn a trestů.

Z této představy se obvykle stává sebepotvrzující předpověď. Pokud s dětmi zacházíme dost dlouho tak, jako by to byla pravda, začnou samy věřit, že to pravda je. A tak mi mnoho lidí řeklo: "Pokud děti k něčemu nepřinutíte, nebudou dělat nic." Ještě hůře, říkají: "Kdyby mě nikdo do ničeho nenutil, sám bych nic nedělal."
To je vyznání otroka.

Pokud se dítě zabývá tím druhem učení, kterému se věnuje většina dětí ve škole, tj. polyká slova, aby je na požádání mohlo vyplivnout zpět na učitele, pak plýtvá svým časem, nebo spíše my plýtváme jeho časem. Takové znalosti nebudou trvalé ani podstatné ani užitečné. Ale dítě, které se učí přirozeně, které sleduje svou vlastní zvídavost, kamkoliv ho vede, které přidává ke svému duševnímu obrazu skutečnosti, cokoliv potřebuje a pro co umí nalézt místo, a které odmítá beze strachu nebo bez pocitu viny všechno, co nepotřebuje, takové dítě se rozvíjí, pokud jde o znalosti, o lásku k poznání a o schopnost se učit.

(John Holt: Proč děti neprospývají)