DON’T PRETEND THAT YOU UNDERSTAND WHEN YOU DON'T, JUST LISTEN

For many years I taught law at a major university in Sydney, Australia. I still teach law, but not at the same place. I used to see my law students---thousands of them in total—do the very same thing I did when I was a law student back in the early to mid-1970s. They---as I did in my time---tried to write down in lectures everything that I said, or at least everything that they thought that I thought was important and needed to be known and regurgitated at exam time.

I well remember when I was a law student. By the way, the present Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was in my law classes way back then. We all knew then that he would go places. For starters, he told us that he would. No, not exactly. But we all knew it. He was then the brightest fellow in the room, and he still is. But I digress.

Anyway, I would write down everything the lecturer said—well, as much as I could---often not fully understanding the complicated legal doctrines, rules and principles the lecturer was pontificating about. I always hoped that the lecture material would make sense to me when I got home. I would read and re-read my notes on the train going home but seldom would the stuff make much sense to me. So, when it came my turn to be the lecturer---I had learned a lot more about the law in the 15 or so years after leaving law school---I would say to my students, ‘Now, if you don’t understand what the hell I’m saying, please don’t write it down. Just listen. Listen carefully. Ask questions. Do anything, but don’t just write down what I say in the vain hope that it will all come together later, for it seldom will.’ Those last few words---'for it seldom will'---would frighten the heebie-jeebies out of the students, but that wasn't really my aim.

Here’s a little Zen story which is more than a little on the point. It goes like this. A monk came to the celebrated Zen master Pai-chang and asked, ‘What’s the most wonderful thing in the world?’ Pai-chang replied, ‘I sit on top of this mountain.’ Impressed, the monk paid homage to the master, ceremonially folding his hands. So, of course, Pai-chang hit the monk with his keisaku (stick). We all need to be hit at times with a keisaku---metaphorically speaking, of course. There are many ways of waking up to the real. I have always favoured the direct, hard-hitting, no-nonsense approach. Zap! Sock! Kapow! Whack! Whamm! (Shades of TV’s Batman.)

Now, the monk did not understand the import and significance of Pai-chang’s statement, ‘I sit on top of this mountain,’ but he felt he had to give the impression that he understood. We are just like that monk. Someone tells us a joke which we don’t quite understand, but which we assume is funny, so we laugh nervously. ‘Oh, that is funny,’ we say, hoping that the other person won’t notice that we don’t get the joke.

Life can only be experienced from within. No one can unlock the so-called mysteries of life for us---no priest, minister, guru or teacher. Direct, immediate and unmediated experience of the real is the only way to know and understand. We must learn to listen. That reminds me of J. Krishnamurti’s many encounters with his audiences. This would happen quite often. Krishnamurti would ask some metaphysical question, and someone in the audience would respond with some pat answer such as ‘There is no self,’ or ‘The knower and the known are one.’ Krishnamurti would snap back, ‘He is copying someone.’ The 'someone' was usually Krishnamurti himself. The pat answer annoyed him to no end. He hated having his own words thrown back at him. So do I as a lecturer. Well, maybe not the first time it happens, but certainly after a while it gets more than a bit irritating. Enough said.

Don’t copy. Don’t write it down. Don’t pretend to understand something when you don’t. Listen to the voice of the real—that is, the voice of experience as well as reason. Self-knowledge and self-understanding, gained from a life lived mindfully from one moment to the next, is worth so much more than all the book knowledge and so-called wisdom of the masters put together.


Note. The photograph at the top left of this post is of the author, on the occasion of his law graduation in 1978 at the University of Sydney.

LIFE IS VERY REAL---ARE YOU?

‘Reality is a question of realizing how real the world is already.’ So wrote the Beat writer Allen Ginsberg [pictured left].

Life is very real. We have our little philosophies and religions and we think we have life explained and understandable, then, wham, reality hits us right in the face with, say, a terminal illness or a death of a close loved one. Here’s a Zen kōan, entitled ‘Nothing Exists’, which illustrates this point.

Yamaoka Tesshu, as a young student of Zen, visited one master after another. He called upon Dokuon of Shōkoku. Desiring to show his attainment, the young student said: ‘The mind, Buddha, and sentient beings, after all, do not exist. The true nature of phenomena is emptiness. There is no realization, no delusion, no sage, no mediocrity. There is no giving and nothing to be received.’

Dokuon, who was smoking quietly, said nothing. Suddenly he whacked Yamaoka with his bamboo pipe. This made the youth quite angry. ‘If nothing exists,’ said Dokuon, ‘where did this anger come from?’

Good question. ‘If nothing exists, where did this anger come from?’

Now, this young student appears not to have understood the Buddhist notion of non-existence. Let’s get this straight. Buddhism does not teach that nothing exists, that is, that there is no existence at all. Think about it. If nothing existed, there would be no one around to make the statement, ‘Nothing exists.’ The statement could not be said at all---but it can be said. (It's a case of 'I philosophize, therefore I am.') The Buddhist notion of non-existence ('emptiness') is this---nothing (that is, no thing) has any intrinsic (that is, separate and independent) existence in and of itself. Everything---that is, every thing---is inconstant, identity-less and conditioned. A thing arises as a result of one or more causes or circumstances and when those causes or circumstances disappear so does the thing. Each thing is a cause of at least one other thing as well as being the effect of some other thing, so a thing is explainable only by reference to one or more other things which themselves are explainable only by reference to one or more other things, and on it goes. For example, a table is made out of wood, metal or other component parts, and it is made by someone. It is not independent of the things that come together to make it up, nor the person who puts those pieces together to form the table. Nothing has any permanent, separate existence in and of itself. This is at least part of what a Buddhist means when he or she refers to things being ‘empty’---they have no separate, independent or permanent existence. Anyway, I digress.

The point is this. The young student thought he would impress Dokuon with his knowledge and wisdom. You see, he thought he had life all figured out. Ha! How wrong he was! He was in for a rude shock. That might have been a damn good thing, for perhaps an experience of instant enlightenment came upon him. Being hit with the Zen master's keisaku (wooden stick) can sometimes help to bring that abut. Yes, perhaps he came to see things-as-they-really-are---for the very first time. Buddhism is very Aristotelian (as opposed to Platonic). At the risk of over-simplification, the essence of Buddhism is – what you see is what you get. That is all there is, but it is more than enough! Things are what they are. Life is not fair. Bad things happen to good people all the time. The innocent suffer. Things just cannot be 'squared up' in the life-to-come. For starters, there is no reliable evidence that there is any life-to-come. We can fairly safely say that this life here is all that there is---but it's more than enough. Make the most of it. I like the late Jackie Gleason's philosophy of life: ‘Just play the melody, live, love, and lose gracefully.’

Japanese formal garden. (Photo taken by the author.)

All too often we utter glib remarks to others who are going through pain or other difficulty or who have suffered bereavement or some other loss---remarks such as, ‘All will be well’, ‘God will look after you’, and ‘Everything happens for a reason’. As I say, we have our little philosophies and religions but when the proverbial shit hits the fan all too often we find that our theories and belief-systems explain very little at all. Part of growing up is to drop our illusions and wake up. Part of waking up is to drop our illusions and grow up. I have found both statements to be true.

When I was at high school I had a French teacher who would often say to us, Je suis un réaliste, or just simply Je suis réaliste (‘I am a realist’). It was clear that he did not believe in God or religion. He was an effective teacher---in terms of producing consistently good academic results in his students over many decades---but he was a bit of a sadist, largely teaching by fear, humiliation and ordeal. Many teachers of that era were sadists. It was considered par for the course. For the most part, things are different now. Now, this was a church school, and once a year the then current moderator of the Presbyterian Church would come to the school and give an address to the students at assembly. One particular year, the moderator was very elderly. Of course, they all appeared elderly to us kids, but this one much more so. This man of the cloth spoke eloquently of a loving God, Jesus, goodness and the life to come. We had a French class shortly after assembly, and I remember our French teacher saying to us, more than once, in the class, Imaginez, ayant toutes ses illusions à cet âge! (‘Imagine, having all his illusions at that age!’). 

That incident occurred some 45 years ago yet I remember it as if it was yesterday. In the ensuing years I would lose all of my illusions—and I don’t regret that at all. Je suis un réaliste ainsi.

‘Reality is a question of realizing how real the world is already.’

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THINGS REALLY ARE---REAL!