...I was talking a great deal yesterday afternoon about the Buddhist attitude to change, to death, to the transience of the world, and was showing that preachers of all kinds stir people up in the beginning by alarming them about change. Thats like somebody actually raising an alarm, just the same way as if I want to pay you a visit I ring the doorbell, and then we can come in and I dont need to raise an alarm anymore. So in the same way, it sounds terrible, you see, that everything is going to die and pass away, and here you are, thinking that happiness, sanity, and security consist in clinging on to things which cant be clung to, and in any case there isnt anybody to cling to them. The whole thing is a weaving of smoke. So, thats the initial standpoint, but, as soon as you really discover this, and you stop clinging to change, then everything is quite different. It becomes amazing. Not only do all your senses become more wide awake, not only do you feel almost as if youre walking on air, but you see, finally, that there is no duality, no difference between the ordinary world and the nirvana world. Theyre the same world, but what makes the difference is the point of view. And of course, if you keep identifying yourself with some sort of stable entity that sits and watches the world go by, you dont acknowledge your union, your inseparability from everything that there is. You go by with all the rest of the things, but if you insist on trying to take a permanent stand, on trying to be a permanent witness of the flux, then it grates against you, and you feel very uncomfortable. But it is a fundamental feeling in most of us that we are such witnesses. We feel that behind the stream of our thoughts, of our feelings, of our experiences, there is something which is the thinker, the feeler, and the experiencer. Not recognizing that that is itself a thought, feeling, or experience, and it belongs within and not outside the changing panorama of experience. Its what you call a cue signal. In other words, when you telephone, and your telephone conversation is being tape recorded, its the law that there shall be a beep every so many seconds, and that beep cues you in to the fact that this conversation is recorded. So in a very similar way, in our everyday experience theres a beep which tells us this is a continuous experience which is mine. Beep! ~Alan Watts..
Posted on: Tue, 19 Nov 2013 19:34:41 +0000
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