Webcast Transcript 1 March 2005

> My name is S.

Wayne> Hi S. How is it you find yourself here today?

> My friend invited me.

Wayne> I see. So what did he tell you, to induce you to come down?

> I haven’t seen him in a long time, but we just had a conversation about spirituality, and he said he thought I might want to come down to Hermosa Beach and check things out.

Wayne> I see. So what, about spirituality, were you talking about?

> Just being a better person; not being so material - just bettering myself.

Wayne> What’s wrong with you? [laughter]

> I feel like I’m too material. We had a three hour conversation about it.

Wayne> Was he telling you that you were too material?

> No, I feel that way. I feel guilty a lot of the time. I feel like I don’t send out enough love to people, and I’m too selfish. That’s how I feel.

Wayne> So, it might be interesting to take a look - I mean, I believe that’s a genuine feeling – you feel that you’re not loving enough, or that you’re too selfish, or too concerned with your own…

> I’m too self-absorbed.

Wayne> Okay, so assuming that you are self-absorbed, to whatever degree – we’ll leave the ‘too’ out of it. We’ll just say that there is self-absorption. So that self-absorption is there. If we start there and work backwards to the source of the self-absorption, how is it that Sheila has become self-absorbed? Did you one day decide, “I think I’m going to be self-absorbed today”?

> No.

Wayne> No. So the self-absorption happened.

> Yeah, little by little.

Wayne> Okay, little by little, and we’ll assume there’s some genetic predisposition to self-absorption, and some sort of quality in your body that may predispose you to be self-absorbed. Then your experiences in life, little by little, may have fostered an increase in self-absorption. Now those events in your life, that may have increased the self-absorption – the real question is, did you engineer those events?

> I don’t know, I think so. I have to take responsibility, right?

Wayne> I don’t know, I mean we’re just asking questions here - there are no right or wrong answers. The process that’s happening here is one of inquiry and examination; where you find out for yourself, by looking at your own experiences. So in the course of your life, experiences happen. The real question is, what was your part in bringing those experiences into being? Presumably people entered your life that you didn’t even know existed. How could you have brought them in, if you didn’t even know that they were alive? Do you see what I’m driving at?

> Yeah.

Wayne> So there’s stuff that’s happened in your life - people that you’ve met - experiences that you’ve had - that were part of a much larger happening than what you could possibly create with your own physical being. So if you can look for yourself at your own experience and your own background, you may begin to see that how you are in this moment, with whatever degree of self-absorption that you have, is a product of huge forces outside of your egoic control. So what I’m doing here is simply pointing your attention to look, and then you need to draw your own conclusions from your own looking, you see? Now if you look, and you see that these other forces were operative, and were instrumental in creating who you are today, then that guilt eases naturally, on it’s own. You don’t have to make any efforts to reduce it; it simply dissipates in the seeing, as you understand that who you are and what you are is a function of the universe, and that includes your finer qualities and those qualities that you and others might not like. I mean, we’re all a mixed bag - everyone is a mixed bag of qualities. Clearly, if you were in charge - if any of us were in charge and capable of creating our own realities - we’d all be saints! We’d be loving and kind and generous all the time, because when we’re loving and kind and generous, you feel better, everybody feels better, and it brings more joy into your life. It’s all this big, positive cycle. It’s easy to see. Once you open your eyes and look around, you say, “Yeah, the more generous I am, the more kind I am, the more loving I am, the more open I am, the more loving, kind, generous and open the world is.” So once you identify that, presumably you do it, right? I mean, if you had the capacity to do that, everyone would. So the fact that despite your best intentions, and your most earnest observations and efforts, you’re still filled with positive and negative qualities, seems to suggest a certain lack of control on the part of the organism, in terms of being the end point of the source.

How are we doing so far?

>Better. [laughter]

[pause]

Wayne> Is it B?

> Yes.

Wayne> We had a chance to spend a long weekend together in Sedona, right?

> Yes we did.

Wayne> So what has your response been to that time we spent together?

> I think that the response is to continue in the same direction and see what happens - the same direction as in Sedona.

[pause]

> In discussions of Buddhist groups, and in conversations about compassion, which is a very strong word, I often see the trend to be that compassion is interpreted as a kind of an expression of empathy. But today I was thinking about that term empathy, and it seems to me that empathy requires the involvement of a self in the suffering of another. And that if the self is involved, the empathy has the feel of, “I’ve felt this kind of suffering that you’re feeling, and therefore, I share your pain.” So it seems - by looking at it that way - that empathy actually seems like a contributor to future suffering.

Wayne> No, this is where you’re getting a little confused, because when you talk about the self, there are two aspects of the self. So often we have discussions in this kind of teaching about being relieved of the self, that the self is the source of the separation, and that the sage has been relieved of this self-ness. But we have to be really, really careful, because what that ‘self’ is pointing at, is what I call this personal involvement – the involved me, the ‘involved self’. The functional self - which is what feels empathy - is a human trait; it is a human quality and characteristic, see? And so that human self is functioning regardless of whether there is an ‘involved me’ or not.

> So compassion and empathy are expressions that occur within the phenomenal experience?

Wayne> Well, to me, empathy is a phenomenal response, and people feel empathy in accordance with their nature, so some people are far more empathetic than others. Compassion, to me, true compassion, the compassion of the sage, is total acceptance; it’s synonymous with total acceptance. See, it isn’t empathy with someone for some situation, which is normally what is thought of as compassion. True compassion is total acceptance.

> What is an act of compassion?

Wayne> You will get considerable disagreement about that, and to me, no act is an indicator of compassion. See, any act is simply an act: there are kind ones and there are unkind ones, and the difference is not always readily apparent. What you may consider to be an unkind act… We’ll take the example of a four-year-old child who’s got a razor sharp knife in their hand, and they’re having a great time swinging this knife around – they’re having a ball! Then you come and take the knife away from them, which is in fact a very kind act, because they’re about to remove a part of their own body with this thing – permanently -and their response is to scream bloody murder, and strike out at you, perhaps, because you’ve taken their toy away. You’ve ruined their day. They were having fun! They were having a great time, and then you come in and mess everything up. What a jerk! So it’s not at all perceived to be a kind act. So is it a kind act or not? It depends who you ask. It depends on the perspective. I mean, what it is, is an act - which is then given significance and judged by whoever is perceiving it.

> Ramesh referred to the deepest and truest form of compassion as, that which is Consciousness itself - an expression of Consciousness, I suppose, I can’t quite remember the actual expression.

Wayne> Total acceptance: it’s what I call total acceptance - which is this act without a subsequent claim of involvement, whatever the act.

> That would get me in a lot of trouble with the Buddhists.

Wayne> Of course it would. It would get you in trouble with a lot of religious people, because there are certain codes of behaviour, and so what is being measured is whether the act conforms to the code value of that group. And that is what is determined to be compassionate or good or whatever.

> Taking the knife from the child could be called an act of war; a pre-emptive act, and therefore not considered to be kind or compassionate, and yet sometimes that’s the right thing to have happened. But then ‘right’ is a value judgement.

Wayne> Yeah, but you see, every judgement is a value judgement. Every possible evaluation is a judgement.

[pause]

> I want to ask about understanding, because I’ve been thinking about what it might be, and what the final understanding might be. I see that I bring to it a lot of ideas about how I have to be, and how I have to understand what’s being said to me or what I read, and it feels like a lot of activity goes into trying to understand things. At the same time, I have a lot of distrust of communications that I receive, either written, or things that I hear, particularly things that include technical stuff. All you’ve got to say is Brahman, Atman, stuff like that, and half of my brain is asleep, and the other half is hyper-attentive to whether or not I’m going to be tricked in some way. I don’t understand how I could possibly take all of that stuff in and really understand anything. Maybe I’m trying to do the wrong thing.

Wayne> Understanding comes or it doesn’t. You do whatever it is that you do, and those things that you do may well precede understanding, or they may precede further confusion. So you do what you do, and you’ve been sitting here long enough to have been exposed to the notion of your ‘doing’ being connected to a lot more than just yourself. So if we expand the notion of ‘your understanding, your doing, your being responsible or irresponsible’, that’s where we point you back to.

[pause]

> Lately, I’ve been dealing with an old type of stress, which makes itself known from time to time in my business. It has to do with the cycles of the business. I have been much more immune to the effects of the cycle over the last couple of years; however, I see there is an involvement in the horizontal aspect of it. I see a potential future event coming in, and I ask what that event means for me, and then I spend time with it. I understand that I’m doing that, but I’m not quite sure - with this particular involvement - how I become uninvolved.

Wayne> You don’t. I mean, that which becomes horizontally involved either diminishes or becomes more active. It isn’t that you deal with it. The ‘you’ that would deal with it, is it! Now I don’t know the exact circumstances that you’re referring to, but know that life is about ups and downs, and for the sage, there is the experience of the up and the experience of the down. There is even a preference between the up and the down: the pleasurable and the painful. It isn’t all neutral like, “Oh, it’s fine, the business goes under, my kids can’t finish their schooling and my employees have to go unemployed blah, blah, blah – it’s all fine, it doesn’t matter….” That’s not true. I mean, if there’s concern for others, there may well be concern for the outcome of something, and hoping that it has an outcome in which those negative things don’t happen.

> And the sage has a preference in that situation?

Wayne> Yes, preferences arise as part of the nature of that organism. Now the sage may well have the nature of being some kind of an easy-going, doesn’t-matter kind of guy. There are such people, but I don’t hear you describing yourself as that kind of person. You are someone who is concerned about the outcome - there is not intrinsically an ego involved there - but the ego may become involved in that concern, and say, “That’s my concern; what will become of me if this happens? How will I - as the ego - deal with that?”

> So the involvement of the ego in terms of its responsibility for the employees, and putting the children through school, or whatever, that’s also the involvement of the ego?

Wayne> Well, what we talk about as ‘ego-involvement’ is how it will effect me - that’s the concern of the ego.

> So if the me is identified as the provider to these other mind-body organisms, then that’s part of its structure?

Wayne> Well we now go back to the same question that you started with today; this notion of what the self is. Because there is a functional self, and that functional self may be concerned with his family and his employees, and their welfare and benefit, and make concrete efforts to see that they are cared for - to the extent that’s possible.

> Is that the working mind?

Wayne> Yes, in the Working mind / Thinking mind model, that would be the function of the Working mind. It is the involvement by the Me in that process, projecting itself into those practical concerns, which is the egoic involvement, and that is the Thinking mind.

> The question I keep coming back to is, how does the Thinking mind stop it’s thinking process, or how does it occur that in this particular circumstance, it stops being involved?

Wayne> There’s no ‘How’ about it: It happens! The understanding is that the involvement happens or it doesn’t. There is no ‘how to not become involved’, because the one who wants to know how to not become involved, is that one.

> I start out observing the Thinking mind, but then when I identify with the Thinking mind, then the observer is gone, and the Thinking mind is back.

Wayne> We can say that, yes, but it’s best really, when using these concepts, to keep them very, very simple. So we’ll go back to the essential component of the concept, which is that the Thinking mind; the involved me’s sole function is to claim the operation of the universe - as it happens through the organism - as my doing. That false claim of authorship is all that that ego does. Everything else happens through the Working mind.

[pause]

What kind of work do you do, Sheila?

> I have a gothic-style pottery business.

Wayne> What’s gothic-style?

> Crosses, skulls, etc. I’m not very interested in my work, I guess. I feel like it doesn’t have meaning.

Wayne> Where would you find meaning?

> In helping other people, I think. Making other people feel better. I think that’s what I ultimately want to do, although I’m not sure in what way.

[pause]

Wayne> If you feel uncomfortable with the light on your face, feel free to pull the blind down.

> Thank you. I was actually thinking about the duality of light and shade.

Wayne> I quite like the image of using light to go in search of darkness.

> I’ve been thinking about Ramana Maharshi’s metaphor of an object and a shadow to describe noumenon and phenomenon, with the object being noumenon and shadow being phenomena. The thought was, what’s moving? Is it the shadow, or is it the light? The light is constant, and the shadow is the movement, and what’s underlying all things is noumenon. But then I was thinking of Nisargadatta’s ‘I Am That’, and that statement, because sometimes you’re identified with the shadow as a phenomenal thing, moving to and fro, whereas the light - in this metaphor - would be the underlying truth of it all - the noumenon. But wouldn’t the statement ‘I Am That’ really say that it’s the light and the shadow combined, that I am?

Wayne> Yeah, I mean we’re massively mixing metaphors here. You do so at your peril! Each of those images is extremely limited, because when you objectify noumenon as something, you’re already so far off the beam. You really, really have to qualify such metaphors. So as a teacher of The Impossible To Teach, you utilise these concepts and these images, but it’s absolutely crucial to understand that it’s impossible to represent that which has no form or substance. So the simple value of that image of the object and the shadow, in which the object is noumenon and the shadow is phenomenon [not light and shadow, but object and shadow], is to point to the fact that phenomena has no independent existence; phenomenon is dependent upon the noumenon for it’s existence. That is the sole purpose and value of that particular metaphor.

> I’m still trying to grasp ways to put into words the noumenon, but you need to bring noumenon into phenomenon to do that - which you can’t do.

Wayne> Right.