Things can either go this way or that. Usually we prefer one or the other, or don't care. When we do care it can be trivial or it can be important to us. When we take sides we end up being bound to this way or that and then it matters existentially to us. If things go against us, like in gambling, then we feel we have lost, and have literally lost something of us. Enough losses and we really start to feel that we are being eroded and are less than we were. Death we presume is the ultimate loss when we lose everything, so a long run of bad luck can feel like death.
But all a long run of bad luck is, is not anything special about the world, it is just us takin the "wrong" sides.
If we watch people betting we can see people get happy and sad in equal measure and see that it all doesn't matter. Its just how individuals have taken sides.
So what is this "taking sides", this caring about "this" or "that"? It is linked to a belief in a substantial self. Because we belief firmly in a "solid self" that like a roulette counter we place on a number we experience the outcome as a "real" thing. Having placed our counter in the world we are bound to the outcome and so bound to what happens.
But there is nothing really there, there is no counter to place in the world. Well there is, but its just a temporary counter that we make decisions with. It doesn't last and it has nothing to do with us. We don't take it with us.
So an enlightened being can lose 10 or 100 or 1000 times in a row and apart from having lost a lot of money, they themselves are completely unaffected. There never was a solid self being staked on this side or that side, so after each spin of the roulette wheel they reset as though nothing had happened. They actually would make a good gambler. People who get permanently attached to stream of betting start to feel unlucky after things go against them for a while, and magically start to think that "their" "luck" will change: the classic Gambler's Fallacy. Well they never had any "luck" in the first place, it wasn't theirs either. It was just a series of events that they took sides on. The taking sides was the thing they added, and it didn't really exist anyway.
So we create all kinds of nonsense in life my trying to take sides and stick on one side or the other. When actually this kind of betting is all in the mind, and there is nothing taking sides either. Its all just imagination.
So everyone laughs at us as we lose 1000 roulette spins in a row. Wow that guy is unlucky all the people around the table say. They joke and make fun of you. Well wouldn't you? Reckon that's a pretty ordinary response to such an unlikely event. They will talk for ages about the time this loser lost 1000 roulette spins in a row. Fair enough. But this is great in a way, its a real test of whether we "really" took sides or whether we just took it all as it came. Given that the self REALLY is insubstantial then literally no one has lost. Suppose you never turned up and never placed those bets. The ball would still fall the exact same way. This is the reality. The bets you placed or didn't place didn't really happen. Well they did but no one was REALLY taking sides, so no one could REALLY lose. Its a bit like a play. Yes all those things happen, but the characters don't really exist they are invented by the actors. We do the same thing in life. We invent a person to take roles like the gambler, but they don't really exist, not in a permanent way that follows us around.
I was watching something on TV today where a guy commits suicide cos he can't handle what we had done. But what was apparent was the question: what does a suicider think they are getting rid of? Once they are dead the body is still there. And what they have done is still there. Nothing actually changes. What the suicider is trying to get rid of is the "bet" that they made, when they became someone. They took sides, and now can't undo that. So they kill themselves to try and get away from this bet in them self. But they don't realise that the token they placed on red or black is just a token. Tomorrow it will be someone else placing the same token in a different bet. It isn't permanent. This body, our self, our decisions, everything is just a token that we place a bet with today and tomorrow it is gone. If we think to kill our self, we are just killing something that is already gone. Likewise if we think to kill someone else we are getting rid of something, that thing we try to kill is already gone too. None of these "selves" or "tokens" exist in a solid permanent way. We are always free.
We could take this freedom wrong to think it means we can just behave anarchistically. If nothing survives then tomorrow we wake up with a clean slate and whatever we bet on yesterday is gone. This is actually true. Its the cheat people think of in Christianity. Jesus says the person who truly repents is forgiven. So people think, well I will just sin all I want and then repent. The problem is, with this attitude you won't be able to repent cos you did it all in the full knowledge you were doing it. What makes you think you will suddenly change to realise it was all wrong? Likewise once you are free from taking this side or that then you won't be interested in types of behaviour that seek this way or that. All evil stems from seeking my way over giving up to some else's way. That is this way rather than that. What is giving other than accepting that way (your way) more than my way (this way). An enlightened being isn't interested in winning or losing, or having things one way rather than the other. Things just are, and even if we do bet, the token is only on the bet for a short while after which it is forgotten.
Another classic example is when we place our token on one side of an argument. All we can think of then is this side of the argument. It becomes "our" side. And we fight, even when the "other" side starts to make sense and we can see that we could have put our token on the other side. Perhaps we will change sides and move our token from red to black. Then all we can think of is black, that is now "our" side. Its often difficult to change sides, we believe we really exist on one side and moving will make us not exist. That feels like humiliation or embarrassment, but it also feels like fresh air to let go and be able to move our token to another colour. We realise after looking at both sides that it isn't so clear which side to chose, and we realise that people stick to the black side and people stuck to the red side are both experiencing the same thing. In an argument it is the same. Both sides can get stuck to their side, and it feels like death to let go. That fear that we become nothing if we let go. We are nothing! That is the essence of the freedom that allowed us to chose. If we really were one side or the other then how could we chose?
Joni Mitchell says this well in Both Sides, Now
Perhaps the roulette bet is a bit unrealistic. In real life the sides of a choice or argument or life are rarely completely symmetrical and identical. You literally have no way of knowing whether it will be black or red. In the real world if you look one way one side looks appealing, if you look another the other side looks appealing. Being able to inhabit both sides of an argument is freedom. Only then can we make a proper choice. And to make that choice purely we are nothing yet. To do this means that we invest only a temporary self in a side, just a reusable token. We experience the cool fresh water feeling that Buddhists call emptiness that accompanies the ability to let go, to be this, to be that. It is the opposite of the gambler who feels they have to take sides again in order to feel complete.
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