Webcast Transcript 22 March 2005
> No, I thought I was going to get here a lot earlier, and I thought I might just have a few things to scribble down.
Wayne> I see.
> Have you lost a few since the last time I've been here? It's been about five months since I've been here.
Wayne> Lost a few what?
> Pounds.
Wayne> [examining himself] I have no idea. I steadfastly avoid scales.
> Looks like you have. [chuckles from the audience] I do have one thought I thought maybe you could comment on and that is the idea that good and bad, and opposites, arise together. Something that struck me in meditation was that they arise together in the mind only, that the opposites don't really seem to exist, and the other thing that struck me was in deep sleep, what opposite is there? And so if you don't really have a mind, or you don't have a belief system, then you don't have the opposites. I was wondering if that seems consistent with Advaita teaching.
Wayne> Who is this you that doesn't have it?
> Who is the me that doesn’t have it?
Wayne> Right. In deep sleep.
> I know, because in deep sleep there is no me.
Wayne > Right. So the whole point… it doesn't have any meaning.
> But even while awake, where are the opposites? The opposites have only come up in the mind, they don't seem to really exist, in other words, they're just notions, of the two polar opposites of good and evil. If you don't have a concept of good and evil, even while you're awake, is there really good and evil? Or is it all just a mental thought process, that there are these opposites?
Wayne> There is, as a function of duality itself, which is a product, you could say, of the mind, is a product of sentience, and this is the pointer in the teaching, this is the model anyway, one way of talking about it, and you said that your own experience is that in deep sleep, of course, the whole question is moot, there is no one to consider it, there's no good-bad, there's nothing, as far as "you" are concerned.
> Right.
Wayne> So, the necessity is a point of sentience, in order for there to be something. Now the nature of this something is polaric opposites. That's the pointer to decribe the nature of what is, that it is composed of these balancing opposites.
> Now even while sentience is occurring, it seems that there have been times for me where opposites don't exist, even while I'm sentient.
Wayne> No, no. The "you" is sentience. You see, "for me", if there is a "me" that is a point of sentience.
> Hm. How would you describe – I don't know what to call them – those events where there seem to be no opposites, I guess no "me" either, there's just kinda what is?
Wayne> But who is that for?
> I don't think it is for anybody. It just occurs.
Wayne> OK, but the occurrence happens through what?
> I don’t know the answer to that.
Wayne> OK.
> I'm not sure it actually occurs through anything. I mean, does there need to be a vehicle for something to actually occur?
Wayne> Can you imagine an occurrence in which there is no perception of occurrence? The very definition of occurrence is that it occurs to something.
> That makes sense, just like in quantum physics you have to have an observer for anything to occur.
Wayne> And what the quantum physicists are saying is that it is the nature of the observer which determines what is observed. That's where they got to. In fact, whether something is a particle or a wave depends on what is measuring it.
> So does that mean whether there is an experience that there is duality or whether there is an experience that there is no duality…I feel I have experiences where there is no duality, the ideas of birth and death and coming and going are simply seen as completely unreal. Is that an invalid experience?
Wayne> It's not invalid at all. The point is that if it is an experience it must be dualistic in nature; all experience has to be subject-object oriented. Now, there is transcendence, which is nonexperiential.
> Oddly enough, the notion of the experience I just talked about only occurs to me after whatever has been is gone, it never occurs during the moment.
Wayne>That's right, so we can point to that and say, yes, that is the default state, the underlying presence which is nondualistic in nature.
> But the experience of it is through a thing.
Wayne > It has to be. I has to be. It has to be.
> OK, good, that clears that up!
Wayne> But the moment you know it, it now is no longer this undifferentiated presence, it is a differentiated something.
> The it is an object of the subject knowing it.
Wayne> That is correct.
> And therefore falls back into the dualism.
Wayne> That's right. And it has to be. I must be that way, given the structure of the manifest universe. And that's why it is said, if you can conceive of a coin with only one side, or a stick with only one end, then you can conceive of a universe in which polaric opposites do not exist. There may be such a universe, this just happens not to be it!
[pause]
Wayne> [reading] Dave asks, "If nothing and nobody is the source, is there any source at all?" The source that we call the Source, that which is pointed to with the term Source, is not an object, it's not a thing. In this teaching, in which all is One, all is Source, the distinction between the source and the product of the source is purely notional, meaning there is no true difference, they are all part of a unified wholeness.
[pause]
> I heard someone use the term Lila. What does that term mean?
Wayne> Lila is the dance, the drama of life, the play of life, that which is manifest – that's the Lila.
[pause]
> A question that might naturally come up from hearing that "all is Source" is how can it seem that Source is not just searching for something. If everything is Source, why does Source search for itself?
Wayne> Source does not search for itself. Source is not a thing. Within the totality that we call the Source, searching happens.
> The Source as a concept… it's hard to conceive of no thing.
Wayne> It's impossible to conceive of no thing, and yet it is precisely that which is pointed at, so it is the mystical movement that is this pointing to that which cannot be understood, cannot be known in any of the ways in which we normally think of understanding and knowing, which is by its nature dualistic, you see?
> "The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao."
Wayne> Exactly. "What is the sound of one hand clapping?"
[pause]
Wayne> [reading] Charlie asks, "Wayne, the questions have pretty well been answered, the teaching answers as they arise, so there is nothing to ask except this: What now, once the understanding, conceptually, is good but the me-sense still clings, often proclaiming 'I am nothing, just doing what is next, taking life as it comes, waiting but living,' the me-sense still hangs on." Well, what you can do is what most people do in that circumstance and that's to give satsang. [laughter]
> You said that seeking happens as a functioning of totality. If even one thing is a function of totality then everything must just be a function of totality.
Wayne> Not just, everything is a functioning of totality, yes.
> So is the… I hate to use the word goal… but is the idea, then, that once you realise that, then just to go with the flow of totality instead of fighting it; instead of saying, "I don’t like the way this is going," instead just to say, "It is happening" and to react out of whatever nature is supposed to happen at the time?
Wayne> But you do react out of whatever nature is happening at the time, you know, and sometimes, in most cases, that nature is involved, sometimes that nature is not involved, and then you act out of the noninvolvement. "The goal" suggests there is something that needs to happen and it's not happening. As far as I'm concerned, everything that needs to happen is happening.
> What other way can it be, I guess?
Wayne> Exactly, so we can say it is unfolding perfectly, just as it is supposed to, or it is unfolding as it is unfolding.
> Now in your case, did you sense a change in your life once you kinda understood that fact, whereas before you didn't? How are you different than you were, say, before you understood that idea?
Wayne> Forty-five pounds heavier [smiles], less hair, different in a lot of ways, you see? Changes happen as a function of having lived so many years since that day. Now, ascribing those changes to the event is a kind of interesting one, deciding what to ascribe to a particular event, you see: "that event caused that which came out."
> No one can narrow down the chain of cause and effect so very accurately.
Wayne> We do so practically in order to tell stories about our lives, and in order to function, we make those kinds ofpractical connections, but in terms of talking about the most essential quality of what is, those conventions are not adequate, you see. We have to examine those conventions as well, and realise that, yes, they are conventions; that we do talk in a kind of code to make sense of the world by just picking out certain points that are given "significance." They are given significance by our personality, they get given significance by our culture, and different cultures emphasize different things, so the story that is told about the same event will be very different, according to your sex, according to your culture, according to your age and experience, all of those things. If you've ever lived with someone you know damn well that the same event is witnessed entirely differently by two people who are looking at the same thing!
> It's like with a girlfriend, when she says, "You never take me out" and I'm like, "Look, we went out on December 18th." It's two different views.
Wayne> "That was four months ago, what the hell's the matter with you?" [laughter]
> So cause and effect, in terms of reality, is no more real than the idea of doership: you can't find any particular thing that either explains anything or encompasses everything.
Wayne> Yes, doership and cause and effect are effective within a very narrow… if you draw a constricting box around some events, then, within that narrow, limited context you can then make these relationships, as long as you quantify it in a small enough way, but understand that that is what you're doing.
> That's like the Buddha said, too many people mistake the finger for the moon.
Wayne> Right, mistaking the finger pointing at the moon for what is being pointed at, precisely. So, the moon in this case is the one reality, but curiously - and this is where the one reality cannot be known - all that can be known is the finger. And so it's very natural to mistake the finger for what is being pointed at, because that is all you can actually talk about, see and experience.
> A limited mind-body object cannot possibly experience a totality which is beyond the scope of its very nature.
Wayne> That's right, because it is not separate from that. You can only experience that which you are separate from. In the same way that the eye cannot see itself and the tongue cannot taste itself.
> I'm thinking of someone who wrote a book that says I have no head.
Wayne> That's Douglas Harding, On Having No Head. I always understood it as sexually meant, but… [laughter]
> That won't make the next transcript.
Wayne> Oh, you never know. [laughter] [pause] [reading] Dave says, "It feels like if someone isn't the source they must be more like a puppet controlled by something else. Is there another alternative?" Yes, the alternative is that this thing that is being controlled by something else is not separate from the something else.
> Can you clarify a point? You said that you can't experience something unless it's separate from you. If, say, for example, I cut my hand I can experience pain, but I look at my hand as myself, so it seems that you can experience things that are not separate from you, unless I'm looking at that wrong.
Wayne> The nature of registering pain is that there is a register-er and something registered, which is that point of cutting, you see? And that is that which is separate from the register-er.
> I've got it.
[pause]
> The mirror can't see itself, it can only see what it reflects.
Wayne> The mirror is not a sentient object, it has no senses.
[pause]
Wayne> [reading] DTS says, "Is the grace of the guru something that it is possible to invite or attract?" The grace of the guru is always here, so it isn't a matter of attracting it, it is a matter of experiencing it, but that experience of it is often described as "grace." And my favorite definition of grace is "unmerited favor from God," the key word being, of course, unmerited, meaning you did not do anything to earn it or attract it or to make it happen, it came unmerited, as part of the functioning of what is.
[pause]
Wayne> [reading] Dave says, "If the source is not something different from us, I get back to thinking we are the source. Is it possible to conceive of it differently?" Of course it is always possible to conceive of it differently, but the pointer of this teaching is that we are the source, and that the source is everything. So if we exist we must by definition be the source, or an aspect of that source, as is everything, without exception.
> When I think of the term "source" I think of something that comes from something else, but if everything is source couldn't you just as easily translate that to say that everything is totality, or are those fairly interchangeable?
Wayne> Totally. Totality, consciousness, Source, Tao, God, Fred, Self, I, Mind with a capital M – the list is infinite.
> You just pick whichever one works.
Wayne> Whichever one you like, yeah, absolutely. And then, after the pointer is used it has to be discarded because the moment you hold it as "it," then…
> You've created that duality, it's an object.
Wayne> That's right.
> That's why the Buddha said that he wanted his followers, once they get there… he compared it to using a raft to cross a river, once you've reached the other shore you can put down the raft, you don't have to carry it around any more.
Wayne> That's right.
[pause]
> I looked on your website and you had a long video, about 50 minutes long, where you read out of a book, a short book, and it was by the third patriarch of Zen, I believe. Is that available still?
Wayne> Yeah, it's up there. Arlene or Donna can find you a copy.
> It was a very entertaining lesson.
Wayne> In fact, that may be the old version.
> It was the new one, where it had changed "don’t be attached…."
Wayne> OK, good.
[The Hsin-Hsin Ming of the third patriarch was discussed in the talk of 21 March 2005]
[pause]
Wayne> [reading] Dave asks, "If nobody is to blame, even though everyone is an aspect of the source, is that because nobody is an independent source?" Yes, blame is a relative occurrence, and within the manifest world blame happens. Now, when we say there is no blame, at root it is because everything is source. [reading] John Rose asks, "Could you comment on the statement that the world does not have an independent existence outside of the perceiver of it?" The mystical understanding is that the perceiver and the perceived are one, that there is nothing independent, period.
> So, taking that one step further, if perceiver and perceived are one, then subject and object would be one as well, isn't that right? What we call duality, in fact then, would not be duality, in the mystical view.
Wayne> That's right, duality is an aspect of the One, as is everything that is manifest.
> As are the perceiver and perceived an aspect of the One.
Wayne> That is correct.
[pause]
Wayne> [reading] John Rose asks, "Would an example of this perceiver-perceived unity be the lamplight reflecting on an object into my eyes and then made into a picture, or is that too literal/mechanical an example?" Yes, it is too literal/mechanical an example. The unity of the perceiver and the perceived is much more essential or basic than that; it is the fundamental building block of the manifest universe.
[pause]
Wayne> Please note there will not be a talk next Monday and Tuesday, as previously scheduled, so those two talks have been cancelled.