organization of human life its systems of communication and systems of control
are extended more and more and more in just the same way for example that by
assimilating the minerals out of the soil and the raise out of the sunlight a
plant like a fern grows and grows and grows and extends its form and in this
way its organization prevails now then you see if you take this task of what we
call the conquest of nature the task of making order victorious over chaos or
randomness if you take this seriously you will look upon it as warfare and you
will firmly believe that the most urgent thing that there possibly can be is to
make order prevail over randomness to make good prevail over evil to make life
prevail over death and we find that when we are in a contest of this kind a
serious warfare game of this kind and we take it seriously we are involved in it
in a very deep and bitter sense now the difference of Buddhism from science as a
form of knowledge is that in Buddhism it would be said that this view of things
this view of the task of life as making order triumph over disorder leave
something out you remember right at the beginning I made some importance of a
Sanskrit word which is fundamental in Buddhism our Vidya
a video which meant ah means non Vidya knowing non knowing or
ignorance or better ignorance ignorance in other words leaving something out of
account and I want to use a familiar illustration to show in what way we
ignore you see here a figure which is apparently as you look at it two faces
in profile about to kiss each other now if we draw back a little from those two
faces we can see on the white area in between them the form of a cup but the
interesting thing about this is that as you look at it you will either be able
to see the form of the cup or the form of the two faces in profile as it were
about to kiss each other you can alternate them between them very rapidly
but you will not be able to see them both that way at the same time in other
words either the white must be the background and the black the figure on
the ground or else the black must be the background and the white cup showing up
on it and so in this way we are unable to see really we can think it after a
while we can get accustomed to the idea that the figure on the ground the black
and the white are mutually necessary to each other in that figure that I showed
you you could say both the cup with the stem and the two faces are there but our
ideas about them our concepts are mutually exclusive and we cannot see
them both at the same time and in the same way in this figure that
I drew we either see the sawn off stumps or the
bear claws it's difficult to see this figure both ways at the same time and so
also just as we see one and not the other so we identify ourselves after all
when you're looking at the white figure in that illustration which is the cut
you as it were identify with the cup when you look at the two faces you
identify with the profile so in the same way when we experience the world around
us we identify with the subject the Noah we don't identify with what we see but
as a matter of fact if there is nothing seen there is no experience of a seer
if there is no seer there is no experience of anything seen they both go
together in the same way as the black and the white and this idea that the yes
and the no the black and the white the inside of a class say we draw a square
as representing fundamentally the idea of class I can't have a square which
doesn't have both inside and outside they go together
and in Buddhism this going together is called shunya although this is often
translated void it means that the inside of the square cannot exist is void
without the outside the subject without the object the black without the white
and this of course is represented in this fundamental Chinese figure of the
yang or the positive principle and the yin or the negative principle like two
fishes constantly circulating going round and round and round and round in
the alternations of life now the question is are these two fishes
involved in a fight is the white one eating up the black one
and the black one trying to eat up the white one if that is the situation then
of course life is fundamentally nothing but a grim contest if this one up here
is the good fellow and this one is the bad fellow if this is order and this is
chaos then a fight goes on between them and that's largely the way in which our
technology has interpreted man's situation as against nature this is man
the white the good fellow this is nature the dark the bad fellow and the white
one has got to eat him up but what happens if the white fish
succeeds in eating up the dark fish the white fish disappears as well as the
dark one because the white one is only there in relation to the dark so then if
these two fishes as it will wake up if this one wakes up and this one wakes up
which is called awakening in Buddhism they realize they're one in other words
they go together they're inseparable from each other and this realization is
that experience which is called in Zen Satori or in Buddhism Bodhi awakening
this sudden dawning on our consciousness that life is not really a contest to
make yes triumph over no to make the positive triumph over the negative the
two sides go together and then one sees in this strange way that underlying all
that is negative in the world all that is in a way painful and evil there is a
kind of necessity to it it goes with the good it is necessary for the good
disorder is necessary for the manifestation of order just as you must
have say a black background to show up a light figure and then when one sees that
a profound transformation takes place in one's attitude to the world that is to
say instead of looking upon life as a contest it becomes it dance it becomes a
game one doesn't withdraw from it one doesn't stop living but one goes into
the game so that these River fishes are no longer trying to eat each
other but they're just going around dancing having the biggest fun in world
so then must we have fixed in our minds the idea there are all the forms and
patterns of nature are simply methods of attack or defense that there are devices
for camouflage that there simply lures for sexual attraction or other
utilitarian purposes or can we see in them a dance in joyous cosmology