The smallest things we do can have huge effects

I don't believe in God. I do believe in the universe. Because it is clearly objectively real, and there's no evidence that God exists as anything other than subjective ideas in human minds.

So I love it when the universe appears to have a message for me. I emphasized appears, since the message I got today from the universe is solely mine. Maybe it's just a coincidence that two authors I've read recently had similar things to say.

No matter. I'm merely sharing what each of them said, which makes a lot of sense to me.

First, I get regular emails from Joan Tollifson where she communicates a fresh essay in line with her particular view of Zen, Buddhism, and spirituality in general. I've become a big fan of Tollifson after reading her book, Nothing to Grasp. 

(I've written several blog posts about the book.)

I liked her newest essay, "The freedom to be exactly as you are," so much, I've included the whole thing as a continuation to this post. Just click on the continuation link and you can read it. Here's an excerpt that reminds me a lot of how Robert Sapolsky describes the illusion of free will in his book, Determined.

In the conceptual picture of cause and effect, it certainly appears that people make things happen. We can seemingly control some things, such as opening and closing our hand, but not other things, such as the functioning of our spleen. These relative differences cannot be denied. We are conditioned to believe in free will and in our responsibility to accomplish great things, be a good person, do our duty, and so on. We habitually judge ourselves and others, compare ourselves to others, and think that we (and others) should be better, stronger, smarter, wiser, more compassionate, more successful, more attractive, more something than we are.

But we don’t actually get to choose the role we are playing in the movie of waking life. No one can simply “decide” to be Martin Luther King or Ramana Maharshi, or to not be Adolph Hitler or Pol Pot if that is the part we’ve been given. Even if we seemingly “choose” to change such things as our name, gender, career, hairstyle, religious affiliation, or anything else, each of these “choices” is a choiceless movement of life itself. Every apparent individual is the result of infinite causes and conditions—the whole universe is moving as each one of us and as everything that happens, and no form ever actually persists for more than an instant. You are not the same as you were when you began reading this article—the whole universe has shifted.

Second, Brian Klaas has written a book, Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters, that has nothing to do with Zen or Buddhism, from what I can tell after reading about half of it. Yet these excerpts are very much in line with what Tollifson had to say above. They just approach the subject differently.

(Here's a link about how different sperm from the same man differ a lot, if you don't believe what Klaas says about this.)

Motivational posters tell you that if you set your mind to it, you can change the world. I've got some good news for you: you already have. Congratulations! You're changing it right now because your brain is adjusting slightly just by reading the words I've written for you. If you hadn't read this sentence, the world would be different.

I mean that literally. Your neural networks have now been altered, and it will -- in the most imperceptible, minute way -- adjust your behavior slightly over the remainder of your lifetime. Who knows what the ripple effects will be. But in an intertwined system, nothing is meaningless. Everything matters. 

You may think this all sounds a bit trivial or abstract, but consider this: You might decide, or you have already decided, to bring some new humans into the world. Without getting into graphic detail, the precise moment that a baby is conceived is one of the most contingent aspects of our existence. On the day it happens, change any detail -- no matter how insignificant -- and you end up with a different child.

Suddenly, you have a daughter instead of a son, or vice versa -- or just a different son or daughter. Siblings often diverge in unexpected ways, so any change in who is born will radically change your life -- and the lives of countless others.

But it's not just the one day that a child is conceived that matters. Instead, amplify that contingency by every moment of your life. Each detail in the entire chain-link architecture of your lifetime had to be exactly as it was for the exact child who was born to be born. That's true for you, for me, for everyone.

Yet again, the motivational posters have sold you short. "You're one in a million!" they shout at you with uplifting glee. Try one in a hundred million, because that's how many competitors, on average, your single-celled predecessor outswam to successfully become half of yourself. 

You matter. That's not self-help advice. It's scientific truth. If someone else had been born instead of you -- the unborn ghost whom you outcompeted in the existence sweepstakes -- countless other people's lives would be profoundly different, so our world would be different, too. The ripples of life spread out, in unexpected ways, for eternity.

Click below for the entire Tollifson essay.

 

The freedom to be exactly as you are 
by Joan Tollifson

We’ve had some gorgeous spring days here, delightfully warm but not yet hot—white blossoms falling through the air turning the pavement white, the first green leaves appearing along with the treacherous ground wasps. The first two giant horseflies have found their way into my condo and died here, a pair of Canada geese have arrived in the nearby pond, perhaps to nest, the frogs are chanting.

In recent weeks, I’ve experienced the most severe flare-up in a very long time of the fingerbiting compulsion that I’ve had since childhood (I bite the skin, sometimes quite severely, never the nails—google “dermatophagia”). My fingers are bandaged as I type.

I’d love to be free of this compulsion, and when it falls away, as it sometimes does for weeks or months at a time, it is a delightful relief. But so far, it always comes back.

I’ve quit alcoholic drinking and heavy cigarette smoking, but this compulsion is far more tenacious. I used to feel shame about it. I took it personally as a sign of how unenlightened and hopelessly fucked up I am, but thankfully, that storyline has disappeared in the realization that life is a choiceless, impersonal happening like the weather. If this compulsion shows up off and on for the rest of my life, I’m at peace with that. And I’m grateful for having had this compulsion—it has taught me some of the most valuable lessons and given me compassion for those whose compulsions are much more terrible.

I can’t tell you how many times friends and readers of my books have offered explanations and cures for this compulsion. And believe me, I’ve tried just about everything you can imagine. I’ve worked on it with a succession of therapists, acupuncturists and somatic workers, along with several spiritual teachers. And it has indeed gotten much better. It happens less frequently, disappears more often, and the wounds are significantly less severe than they once were. But still, it flares up and is often completely uncontrollable.

We love to try to explain things and find cures, all of which has its place. But spiritual liberation points to the possibility of not needing a cure or an explanation—simply being awake as the unvarnished bare actuality of just this, exactly as it is, rough edges and all.

THIS, in fact, is all we ever really have—present experiencing, the immovable here-now, this awaring presence, just as it is, which is always right here, right now and yet never the same way for even an instant. No one is ever actually separate from this. No one is in control of it. There are apparent choices and what sometimes feels like having or not having control, but all of this is arising choicelessly. We cannot decide to do anything other than exactly what we are doing (or not doing) in each moment. The apparent thinker-decider who seems to be steering the ship is a mirage. This can sound frightening, but in truly grokking it, it is immensely freeing.

Cause and effect, time and space, self and world are all abstract conceptual overlays on an ever-present immediacy that cannot actually be divided up or pulled apart. There is infinite variety here, but if we look closely enough, no actual boundaries and no separate and persisting “things” can ever be found.

As I’ve often said, what appears is like a tumbling series of kaleidoscopic Rorschach blots that the pattern-seeking mind is always reifying and interpreting—labeling, categorizing, weaving narratives around them—and presto, the apparently solid and fractured world appears, the world with “me” at the center of it.

In the conceptual picture of cause and effect, it certainly appears that people make things happen. We can seemingly control some things, such as opening and closing our hand, but not other things, such as the functioning of our spleen. These relative differences cannot be denied. We are conditioned to believe in free will and in our responsibility to accomplish great things, be a good person, do our duty, and so on. We habitually judge ourselves and others, compare ourselves to others, and think that we (and others) should be better, stronger, smarter, wiser, more compassionate, more successful, more attractive, more something than we are.

But we don’t actually get to choose the role we are playing in the movie of waking life. No one can simply “decide” to be Martin Luther King or Ramana Maharshi, or to not be Adolph Hitler or Pol Pot if that is the part we’ve been given. Even if we seemingly “choose” to change such things as our name, gender, career, hairstyle, religious affiliation, or anything else, each of these “choices” is a choiceless movement of life itself. Every apparent individual is the result of infinite causes and conditions—the whole universe is moving as each one of us and as everything that happens, and no form ever actually persists for more than an instant. You are not the same as you were when you began reading this article—the whole universe has shifted.

It may seem that you are choosing to read this right now, but if you look closely as choices seem to happen, it may be discovered that there is no one calling the shots. Thoughts arise unbidden and suggest actions or claim authorship: “I must do this,” “I should do this,” “I shouldn’t do this,” “I will do this,” “I will stop doing this,” “I did this,” “I could have done something else,” or “You did this and you should have known better.” But when we look for this apparent captain of the ship, what do we find? As someone once said, the self is like a clenched fist—open it and there is nothing there.

Look for it, and all you find is an ever-changing stream of thoughts, sensations, memories, mental images—and maybe a contracted thought-sense of being “in here” inside this body—and finally, as the only certainty, the undeniable knowingness of being here now, present and aware, not as someone, but as this boundless awaring presence showing up as the whole of present experiencing—with no actual findable boundary between inside and outside. The “me” who seems to be authoring my thoughts, making my decisions, living my life, observing and managing and evaluating it, is a kind of mirage.

Science looks at things objectively, from the outside, and comes up with theories. This is second-hand knowledge. It certainly has its place—it has given us modern medicine and gotten us to the moon. But what I’m always pointing to is direct experiencing, direct knowing. Science can tell us that water is made of hydrogen and oxygen, and that can be useful information. But direct experiencing is something else. It is not theoretical or abstract. Direct experiencing or direct knowing is drinking a glass of water, seeing the ocean, swimming or bathing in water—that direct experience of water requires no learning or belief. It is undeniable, immediate, direct. It cannot be doubted. Any explanation, description or interpretation of this experience can be doubted, but not the bare experiencing itself. Direct knowing is non-dual. There is no experiencer apart from the experiencing. That direct, immediate, non-conceptual knowing cannot ever be put into words in the way that second-hand scientific knowledge can be. Direct knowing, which is synonymous with being, cannot be grasped, and yet it is vividly present.

To the me-identity, all this may sound dreadful. No choice. No control. Being nobody. Nothing actually here but a flow of kaleidoscopic Rorschach blots that can never be grasped, pinned down, explained or understood. What could be worse?

But all this only sounds scary from the perspective of the mirage, the me-identity, who seems to be a separate fragment in a divided up world. That “me” is trying desperately to survive as “me.” It fears death—not just instinctually, as when a hungry tiger appears in front of us, but psychologically. Knowledge and being able to pin things down conceptually seems to give us control—and in everyday reality, this makes sense in many ways. Control promises security. No control sounds terrifying, like being in a speeding car without a steering wheel or brakes.

But we’re not actually separate from the car or the whole universe. Our ability to drive a car is a happening of the whole. You can actually feel this as you’re driving—you can’t begin to say how you turn a corner, merge across a busy five-lane freeway, or steer through a maze of traffic. It happens all by itself! If you tried to think about it, you’d crash the car or be immobilized. If you’re an anxious driver always second-guessing yourself and white-knuckling the steering wheel, you are much more likely to crash the car because those me-centered thoughts are interrupting the undivided flow in which you and the car and the traffic are one whole happening. Of course, nothing can really interrupt the flow, and even anxious thoughts and traffic accidents are nothing other than this indivisible seamless flow. There is no findable beginning or end to anything.

We can see all of this directly for ourselves if we explore present experiencing with careful open attention. As we watch the natural world perpetually dying and regenerating, eating and being eaten, evaporating and raining, we may get a sense of the indivisible wholeness running though all these changes. When we cling to a particular form, we suffer. Whether that form is “me” or a particular way of doing things or someone we love, we cannot hold onto anything. Of course, not clinging doesn’t mean not caring deeply about the people, places and things we love, or not grieving or feeling sad when they perish. All of that is part of the flow.

The more clearly we recognize the undivided choicelessness and wholeness of being, the more at ease we feel. This recognition is the end of guilt, blame, self-judgment, and the stress of trying to “be somebody” and do it right and get somewhere and make something happen. It doesn’t mean action no longer happens—we might still be organizing a political movement, trying to find a cure for cancer, training for the olympics, working to put food on the table, seeing a therapist to undo some of our painful conditioning, disciplining our children, or whatever else we are moved to do—but it no longer seems like “me” doing it.

Seeing the illusory nature of the separate, independent self, relaxing and opening the tight fist of self-contraction, being this openness that we are and that Here-Now is, is the freedom to be exactly as we are in each moment and for everything and everyone else to be exactly as they are. It all belongs. It’s all included. And all of it is disappearing as soon as it appears—no-thing ever actually persists.

Again, that doesn’t mean passivity. But all action is the action of the whole. And there is no separate chooser, no “me” standing apart from life. That recognition brings peace, but it doesn’t mean always feeling peaceful—it means being at peace even with upset and apparent conflict. Not needing it to be different. Seeing from wholeness rather than from a fractional perspective, being this one bottomless moment that we actually cannot ever not be, this awaring presence that has no borders or seams. Being just this. And it’s always already so. There’s truly nothing to do other than exactly what is happening. This is it!

Comments

[sant64]

TREASURE BEYOND MEASURE XI

Charan Singh's visit to the 1980 Kumbh Mela:

Up to this point, much of the content has been Charan's laments of how busy he is. This leads me to wonder just why Charan is so busy. Charan writes of his schedule as though he was in the employ of some Dera authority who was crushing him with an insufferable workload. But given that Charan was "maharaji," how could this be? Surely Charan was choosing each thing to do or not do, each minute of his day, of his own free will. As well as choosing to complain about it.

Yet despite his active schedule, Charan says he took time off for a "photographic enterprise to Ujjain to attend the Kumbh Fair." Perhaps this excursion was dictated by Sawan's Mauj or "the universe," but it seems more likely to me that Charan was a creature of will just like the rest of us. Like us, he bitched about working a lot, patted himself on the back for his industry, and justified time off from that work for trivial pursuits.

Trivial pursuits. Have Charan's Kumbha photos ever been published? Was there really a point to his traveling 1000km to Ujjain to photograph sadhus?

Well, of course, the universe made Charan do it. But more precisely, Charan's journey seems to have been motivated by contempt for the Kumbh's participants. "It was to be seen to believe how people are exploited in the name of religion--that even in the twentieth-century people are living in such superstitions and ignorance, and just ritual and ceremony is the be-all and end-all of their God-realization. Anyway, from the photographic point of view, it was a paradise to see thousands of men and women taking bath in dirty water and moving about practically naked--especially men rubbing ashes on their bodies and getting obeisance from the masses."

This sounds like Billy Graham at Woodstock. But to be fair, Charan may have a strong point about empty rituals and financial exploitation in the name of religion (which leads to an intriguing question: is the course of religious innovation powered more by avarice than anything else? Were all rituals created as material products for sale?) There may be a strong case for that. Pundits of India created thousands of sects, each with its special powers rituals that required regular financial donations.

Be that as it may or may not, would there had been a different entry in TBM, one about Charan Singh, the Perfect Living Master of the Age, journeying to the Kumbh Mela to deliver the supreme gospel of Sant Mat to the benighted Hindus. But instead, we get Charan gloating about snapping pictures of the foolish.

But most assuredly it doesn't really matter anyway, since the universe caused it to happen.

[umami]

"Billy Graham at Woodstock."

Psychedelic!

sant64,

Isn't it obvious? Photography was only cover. MCS went to give secret darshan!
Of course he wouldn't declare it, that goes against the code!

swami umami: "Drag a magnet through dirt and iron filings will attach."