June 2, 2018
The self looks out of whatever “I” is at the surrounding world, and struggle and strife and conflict and selfishness are seen everywhere. And the self, if it looks and sees, might feel a great sorrow directed both inward and outward to the world. Inwardly the self might try to determine its boundaries and see if it is possible to strengthen and intensify its center, and to defend and perpetuate itself. Outwardly the self might try to define its relationship to the world, and to find the way it is responsible in its actions in the world. The search inward for the center and outward for relationship spring from the sorrow that is felt, and there is a great desire to modify the conditions that bring the sorrow into consciousness. The “I” desires to be secure and stable and to live in a world that is right by some criterion.
Sorrow and desire and the self are a whole event. Sorrow and desire are of the same origin, they are the same thing. They originate in the struggle of the self to maintain itself, they are linked to the effort of the self to perpetuate the self. The desire to find security, to do something significant, to be something important, to save the world, to bring peace on earth, to make the world safe for democracy, to feed the starving in Ethiopia, to leave the children a livable planet, to see God – whatever is desired is the perpetuation of the self.
Whatever the self sees that it desires springs out of the opposite of that which is desired. There is conflict, so the self desires peace. The planet is polluted, so the self desired to clean it up. The self does not perceive the source, so it desires to see God. The self sees what is not and desires that it be. What is not is the opposite of what is. Desire is opposition.
That entity that is separate and in opposition and desiring and sorrowful might begin to look at the origin of its desires. The I thinks that it’s work is not significant and makes no contribution to the wellbeing of the world. The mind says that it should be otherwise, that I should do significant work, that I should make a contribution. And so the I begins to want these things. This is the work of the mind determining how it ought to be, judging that as it is now is not acceptable, is not enough. Thus reality is fractured, is divided into how it is and how I want it to be. The I becomes an agent who wants, who is separate from what is. Whether the wants are noble or ignoble, glorious or squalid, important or trivial, it is all the same – the self separates as-it-is from as-I-want-it. the self is in conflict with reality, is separate, is divided, fragmented. “At the first distinction, heaven and earth are set apart.”
Is it possible that it be otherwise? Can the possibility be examined without desiring it? The integral undifferentiated entity in the state of wholeness, at one and identical with reality, is without desire. There is no yearning, no hope, no grasping, no striving. There is no defense and no resistance. There is pure being. How does this state come about? the moment the self wants it the possibility is obviated. How does desire desire its own demise? It can’t of course. The state comes about through indirect means, and can’t be willed. There is attention to as-it-is, there is seeing, which is pure perception, and no kind of doing is involved.
The self and the mind of the self will want to turn this into something to be avoided at all costs. The mind will hold that the only acceptable state is striving for something, hoping for a particular end, yearning for some state, intending. All of this is powerful motivation for all sorts of doing. The mind will hold that without doing there is no excuse for living. So the creature called Human Doing is born. All of this willed motivated action springs from fear.
There is great fear that comes before attention. The fear is that without doing there will be annihilation.So the mind is afraid to see. What the mind can’t know is that there is within the act of perception spontaneous right action, that springing out of seeing is thoughtless motiveless doing and this is a seamless integral function. Seeing and action as “wholeness enfolded in the implicate order” has no self and no mind. It is. The entity in this state is Human Being.
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