I commented a few posts ago that we can watch the news and hear about someone dying in a foreign country and it means almost nothing. As I write this someone here has the NEWS on, and they just causally referred to people having died in a crush at Kabul airport. I think these nameless people will never be mentioned ever again: their death is completely irrelevant to the Western media. We assume that their death is traumatic to their friends and family, and especially themselves. As they were crushed and realised that they were in danger, and then the fear of realising that this may well be the final moments, and then the processes that actually killed them come into play and their struggle to survive giving way to acceptance and collapse of their physical bodies. A really difficult time for them. But I was actually drawing that picture above while the news mentioned that people had died. What a completely different experience I was having to them. But we both inhabit the same world. We just have completely different perspectives on it and see completely different part.
So this is the world. There are billions of perspectives on this, and billions of things going on, but the one that matters is our own.
But we do recognise this is problematic. what is the connection between myself and my perspective. Why should my perspective be so important to me, and other people's perspective be so important to them. Why for instance was the description I gave above so important to the people who died in Kabul but not to me?
Well the trivial answer is that I was not the one who died. But this is not quite right. Suppose we discover that one of those who died was our partner. It's not me whose died and yet suddenly its important to me.
A sceptic would say well it's not you who died, but its your life that just got turned upside down as you no longer have a wife. It's still your perspective.
Often people now switch to motherly love. A mother discovers that their child is involved in the crush.
The sceptic says well it's the fact it's their child that matters.
But then the mother rushes into the crowd to save their child and is crushed.
The sceptic says they were stupid. What they wanted to happen was save their child and come out alive, but they made a mistake and lost both.
But then we discover that the mother dived on to the child to cover them and save them and the child survived but they sacrificed their life. And they intended this to happen.
There comes a point where even the hardest advocate of self-perspective has to challenge this belief that everything is done from self-perspective. It can be that sometime people sacrifice themselves because they see things from someone else's perspective and that other perspective will do instead of their own.
The classic example of this is the soldier dying for their country. They very most probably have no idea what the perspective of their leaders is, they are just prepared to accept this perspective instead of their own and lay their life down.
In the diagram above this changing if perspective and view point is moving that red spot of "gripping" outside the locus of my own perspective and into another perspective.
Its actually quite common.
When we watch a film and we fall in "love" with the lead character or deeply identify with a character we actually move our red spot of gripping so that we are drawn along by that person rather than ourselves. When we leave the cinema we may well drag this person around with us for a while. The same when reading a book or hearing a tale about someone. Heroes are like this. We see the world from the perspective of the hero for a while.
If we look at the diagram above we see the unbounded expanse of reality. This is vaguely believed in. I live here you live there and the boundaries are just like garden fences. Indeed we base our physical layout of houses to reflect this inner model of the world.
I guess some people don't believe in "the world." Everything is either me or you. Other people accept a middle worldly realm that is not me or you but which lies between us. Perhaps we can call the Nature. It doesn't really matter it is all just boundaries on the basic universe we believe in.
Now in "normal" thinking I AM. I am everything within that boundary of me. This idea is part of me. If the idea is rubbish in some way so am I. This passion is me. This hunger is me. And it extends into the world. That leg is part of me. And even outside the body so that this car is part of me. That wife is part of me.
Equally other people have the same attitudes to their space. I am everything within that boundary of me. This idea is part of me. If the idea is rubbish in some way so am I. This passion is me. This hunger is me. And it extends into the world. That leg is part of me. And even outside the body. That car is part of me. That husband is part of me.
If you damage or are disrespectful to anything in my realm then you are disrespectful to me directly.
But this is ever so slightly wrong. The point is that nothing is YOU. ALL you have is a grasp on things. You can grip hold of this feeling, or that idea, or this leg, or that car or that woman/man.
Liberation is nothing more than realising how easy and effortless it is to let go that grip on some part of the world.
Take a real situation. Someone takes a baseball bat to our car. I saw this done once.
So obvious first fact. I can get the car fixed or replaced it under insurance. This illustrates just how easy it is to let go. I just get another.
But perhaps I have a stronger grip on this particular car. Perhaps I worked for ages to get that car. I have a strong grip cos of all that time and effort. Well not any more, you are now gripped to a smashed car and that is what hurts. It's not the smashing of the car that hurts, its the fact we are gripped a smashed car. And we don't want to let go, even while it is no longer the beautiful car it was but has suddenly changed into something we don't want. We still want to grip a beautiful car and that is not happening anymore. That grip to what we thought and expected and and desire is blinding us to what is really happened.
You see people starting to have a fight and friends say "let it go, he's not worth it." This is great advice,. Just let go it's not worth what you thought anymore.
So we grieve our car and we let go. This is the right process. How hard we grieve is linked to how hard we are gripping.
But chances are things get more complex. We start to think "who did this?" There is a "you" out there is who did this. In fact "they" are just a grasping to another region of the world, but we don't see that. We see somebody out there in the world, a "you", a physical being who opposes our physical being of "me". And we start to raise anger at the person who did this. We are digging the pit, we must later escape from, ever deeper.
Okay its a reasonable thought. It might be useful to find out who did this because they are clearly not happy. And finding out whether we can do something to make them happy would be useful. Perhaps we did something wrong to them and didn't realise. Perhaps they have other problems and you just happen to be the victim of their anger. It's often hard to find out the real answer to these things, but knowledge does no harm and will help you make the right choices.
Of course this is not really how we often think. We want that knowledge to (1) protect ourselves from it happening again (2) to go in search of that person and harm them. The situation is getting worse and the suffering and mistake is spreading.
I have a little thought around about now which is "generosity". I think: "I don't really understand their motives, but I really hope they got what they want." Perhaps if they want more we can work on it. Generosity always helps.
But often the rabbit hole keeps opening up and we fall further and further. Perhaps it triggers a depression and self doubt. And who knows where all this goes.
But it all rotates around the fact that we have a grip on that car. That is all. And we don't want to let go. We believe by holding on something good will happen. And even when nothing good is coming and we are angry, upset, depressed and starting to do unhelpful things we still keep holding on like our very life depends upon it.
See the last post. Jesus on the cross whose life really did depend on it did not hold on to anything. Buddha also on the night of his enlightenment faced all the threats and desires that could be thrown at him and he did not hold on to anything.
Perhaps we think if I let people walk all over me they will lose respect and my social standing will fall and people will abuse and steal from me and I will end up starving and killed. First thought here is that this may happen. There is a risk in letting go. But the point is that the risk is always worth it. Did Jesus think he would resurrect? If he did then where was his worry in death? And this is where it gets subtle. On one hand we must not believe in nonsense. If I don't eat I will starve and die. Buddha learned this. yet we must not eat just for fear of dying. With the attitude that all that matters is life then we may as well live on a life support machine. Ultimately, and correctly, we eat because we have compassion for our bodies that need food. We eat for the exact same reason we give food to a hungry dog we find abandoned in the street. Out of kindness. That is the true reason. So if Jesus had saved himself from the cross he would have done it for the same reason he healed all those people to save them from suffering. But he didn't because he had a greater task that afternoon to end all grasping at self so that he could be free from the mortal body.
We will be tested. We will be tempted. And each time we just need to make the wise decision when to let go. When this becomes effortless we are free and there is no longer anything for the world to harm. If I am not here then how can what happen here harm me.
It's exactly like selling a house and hearing some time later that the house has burned down. It doesn't affect us, we no longer has a grip on that house. But we feel sorry and compassionate for the one who does grasp at it. When fire sweeps through a house that we do have a grasp on we have compassion for our self in the exact same way, and we also realise that we can just let go too so that we no longer live, or grasp there. Not living there how can it hurt us?
This is it. When we ungrip from our own interests and grip onto others to help and be compassionate we are proving to ourselves that there is no real fixed permanent and immutable me.
There is a me, but its "over there" now. Just as I can see someone over there suffer and it does not affect me as much as when that suffering is over here. If I go over there then my own suffering is not so great.
The truth here is that I am not really myself. That illusion that my own interests are SOOO important just comes from my choice to grasp at my world.
When Buddhism talks of reincarnation this is what it means. We take rebirth when we grasp at a "me". When I decide to grasp eternally and unbreakably to myself then I am born and I will suffer and die. But if I weaken that grasping so that I can let go and even grasp at others then I am no longer limited to just myself. I become free of being here or there, I am no longer bound to a particular existence. There is no longer a fixed self I must return to. I have no home I am at home everywhere. If this house burns down it is just one house of billions. How different that attitude to being bound to a particular address which is fine most of time but then when it burns there is suddenly total catastrophe. The same is true of death.
So the illusion of self simply occurs in grasping at myself. Its not that myself does not exist and more or less than another person. But that grasping at this one and making it "me" and "my only home" and concern (being selfish essentially) limits me to just this self and that binds me to death.
Some reading that may be inclined to think of something like "out of body experience" (OBE). This is not correct.
If we think about OBE we have people reporting being able to see things outside their body. I remember hearing one doctor saying that a patient who had been dead came back to life and reported a "near death experience." In that experience she left her body and looked back at her dead body on the bed being resuscitated and because she was near the ceiling she was able to tell the doctor about some books on the cabinet. He looked and they were there. Regardless whether this is possible it is not the point above.
The issue of grasping and ungrasping the world is all played out "as the world is" without having to invent anything else.
If OBE exists then we can just as easily grasp at that. It's the grasping that is the point. It is not about souls or whatever moving around outside bodies or not. Its not a physical thing and it does not mean that anyone moves. Its instead just about who we chose to grasp at. I am me and you are you, but whose perspective do I identify with is the point. Once I can see the world as though through your eyes, or more to the point I take what you see through your eyes as seriously as I do my own, then I am no longer grasping at myself.
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