that is a way of demonstrating the basic experience which underlies some of the major
forms of oriental philosophy and actually this way of demonstrating it is taken from a kind of
Chinese and Japanese buddhism called zen which i'm going to be talking about quite a bit today
because zen is one of the best examples of a philosophy shall we call it
in which this experience is dominant zen of course is a Japanese word and it's spelled z e n
that is the Japanese way of pronouncing the Chinese word chan
and this in turn is the Chinese way of pronouncing an indian sanskrit word dhyana
and dhyana
refers to the kind of experience which has been represented
in this circle another word for it would be a third a second sanskrit term
and the nearest we can translate shunya in english is emptiness or void
and so we might say this is an experience of the void
before trying to explain what this is and you know the funny thing is it really can't
be explained because it has to be felt because it's a transformation of one's basic feeling
one's basic consciousness of life but i should mention first that it is characteristic
of eastern philosophy to be based on experience rather than ideas you see
philosophy in the western world especially as it's taught in our universities and academies
is mainly a matter of thinking it's a matter of trying to arrive at certain clear positive
ideas about the nature of man the nature of the universe and so on and so forth and also religion
in the west is somewhat similar because religion is largely concerned with belief in certain ideas
in these basic forms of eastern philosophy on the other hand such as zen which is a kind of buddhism
or taoism the basic native philosophy of china or in vedanta which is the central form of
indian philosophy what is basic to them is not ideas but a way of experiencing a way of feeling
and this might be called as it is here the void demonstrated by this circle
because it is not a void which is just emptiness this isn't the idea
that there are people in the backwood world of the backward worlds of asia who think that
the universe is ultimately nothing at all it is rather that the void represents complete spiritual
freedom or you might say if you don't like the word spiritual complete psychological freedom
and therefore i want to try if i can to communicate to you to give you some idea
of what this experience is in Japanese in zen it is called satori
i'll write that down it's an unfamiliar word
s a t o r i
and i like the way that that's pronounced in southern Chinese they pronounce it
because it's something that happens to you sudden now let me try if i can possibly
to put into some sort of words what this experience is this experience
which so far as they are concerned is the objective of human life
to get this is to understand the meaning of human nature and destiny
only because it's a transformation of consciousness because it's something you
feel rather than something you think it is for this reason difficult to put into words
but it is as if you saw quite suddenly and indeed this experience could have happened to you
it can come without warning to anybody and so what i'm going to be saying
may strike a familiar ring in some years but it is as if quite suddenly you became totally convinced
that the way everything is in this universe and at this moment is absolutely right and that's almost
putting it too weakly i'm not trying to talk about a sort of pollyanna feeling where we say well this
is the best of all possible worlds and everything however evil and however wrong is going to work
out all right in the end because it's a means to an end in some master design i'm not saying that
i'm saying it is suddenly feeling that everything is right the way it is now
however appalling however terrible and you know it beyond a shadow of doubt
there are two other aspects to this experience as well and although you feel them all together we
have to talk about them separately while the first aspect is feeling that everything just as it is is
so right that you could say of it this is why i'm alive this is what life's all about the second is
that everything you see and feel seems to come to life in an extraordinary way you
feel the world as you've seen it before was seen almost in a dream but it is as if just
the ordinary things that were confronting you suddenly went yeah and came alive
and the third aspect of it is that you no longer feel yourself and what you are experiencing
to be separated although you don't lose the feeling of the outline of your skin
you don't forget that i or joe dokes is a possible name by which you can refer to yourself
nevertheless it suddenly seems to you that your skin is no longer what divides you from
the world it's what joins you to it what you see outside you is also you now we ordinarily restrict
the idea of ego of highness or of youness to some sort of psychological entity or process inside us
which is in control of things and we identify ourselves with a sort of controlling center
but in this experience it is as if that center was suddenly enlarged to include the whole universe
you almost feel as if you were god except that in eastern thought one doesn't think of god as
a kind of omnipotent person i mean there are lots of people in our asylums who say well i'm god i
was like the story of the woman who insisted that she was god and to humor her someone said well
if you're god will you please explain how you managed to create the universe in six days
she said i never talk shop it isn't feeling god in that sense as if you could do anything
but it is feeling that you and this whole world are one
and that in this experience of oneness and the sudden coming alive of everything
and the profound rightness that's the only word i can use the profound rightness of each moment
of this moment however far it may seem to be short of one's ideals of perfection this is it
and you say having seen this i can die content this is what it was all about
underneath it all there is this vast realm of conscious presence there is a presence
there without which you wouldn't be able to perceive anything you wouldn't be able to
think anything it's a little bit like i compared sometimes too before you live on the
surface of the ocean you're a little ripple on the surface of the ocean
and this ripple only knows itself as a ripple and it is it it looks at other ripples
and sometimes feels threatened by other ripples or wants to use other ripples to enhance its
own sense of self and it's always fearful it always compares itself to other ripples
very unpleasant and frustrating way to live it hasn't realized the depths of its being
because the ripple is only a temporary expression of the vastness of the ocean
but it doesn't know that so if the rebel for a moment comes to us
if if the the continuous thought in this analogy the rebel of course is the human being
and the rebel when the ripple stops thinking for a moment and this is the key for a moment
you come to a cessation of the stream of thinking and what's left when you're not thinking about
your your history your personal history or the future you're just becoming aware of this
moment yourself this moment but what is that self it's no longer the historical self all you can't
say very much about it there is an underlying sense of presence of a life conscious presence
it's still it's alive the awakening can begin with realizing that you are not the thoughts that go
through your mind that's the beginning now what has arisen at that moment awareness suddenly you
realize that there is a dimension of consciousness in you that's not thinking but just conscious
and that is your essence identity to be rooted in that it's ultimately very simple
i don't know why they don't teach that at school i mean the most important life lesson
is the transcendent dimension of of of life of who you are to find all the ancient teachings
using different terms and different words they all point to this possibility of realizing the
transcendent dimension of who you are whether the buddha calls it the buddha actually calls
it the translation is shunyata emptiness but better translation would be spaciousness
that's the essence of who you asked in the utter spaciousness
jesus talks about the kingdom of heaven which in my translation is not i translated kingdom
i translate this time i translate it as dimension and heaven which is the vast heaven when you look
up at the sky that's the closest thing you can get to spaciousness in in the sense perceived world
the closest thing you can get to species if you look at the vastness of the sky or heaven
in many languages heaven and sky is the same word so you look at the vastness of sky
which is vast spaciousness so the kingdom of heaven is the dimension of spaciousness it's
a dimension of consciousness this is why then they asked jesus where is the kingdom of heaven
when is it going to come and he said the kingdom of heaven cannot come with signs to be perceived
you can never say it's over here or it's over there because the kingdom of heaven is within you
in fact he was saying it is the essence of who you are consciousness is but it's not only the
essence of who you are it's the essence of the universe itself because you are
you are just a microscope of the universe so when you realize the essence of who you are
the universe is realizing its own essence through you this little thing through you
the ideas of alan watts and eckhart tolle are fundamental contributions to the wisdom on this
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