Grasping

We often find ourselves holding onto something we didn't even acknowledge we grasped.

Something happens and we find the thing we grasp being dislodged. Automatically we try and restore the grip. This can lead to all sorts of automatic behaviour.

Perhaps something happens or someone suggests we are not good at our job. If we hold onto "being good at our job" then we start to grasp to re-establish our hold on "being good at our job."

It can be quite a panic 

So we behave quite instinctively and without much thought. We need to regain that grasp, and we probably didn't even realise we had it before.

But actually there are 2 ways to go here:

The left way is to fight to restore our grip again. But we often over look the right way which is to acknowledge the grip we had and re-evaluate it.

Life throws exactly the right stuff at us to reveal what we are gripping.

It is quite spooky how right life is. This is why it is often said that "Life is a Test" which if we pass we get to Heaven.

But how and why is this? It seems too metaphysical and hocus-pocus to be true.

Well for something to exist you need the thing and you need someone to see it. The famous question "What sound did this tree make when it fell?"

We "know" it made a sound, but if no one was there to hear it then there was no actual "sound". We need be a bit careful. I'm sure fine analysis of the soil or something could prove there were sound waves being generated and the evidence is there for a sound. But what is the sound of sound waves if no one is there to hear them. The point is not that a tree fell, or sound waves were made or any other "thing" what we are referring to specifically in "hearing" is the consciousness of a sound. Someone with hearing needs to be there for there to be a "sound." Not sound waves, not any material thing but "sound" as we experience it.

The point of that exposition is to bring our attention not to the facts of the world but the experience of the world. If two people walk through a museum and then speak afterwards we know there experience will be different. One will say "wow did you see the display of dinosaur bones" and the other will go no but did you see the display of "musical instruments." Museum is the same, but how we interact and the experience we get is different. Life is like that!

We are not actually interested in the facts of life; we are interested in the experience, that is how it presents itself. It is the ability of certain things to present themselves to us that makes up our life. And why do somethings present themselves and others do not present themselves? Well that is to do with who we are. More precisely this is called in the East: Karma. Karma is best explained in terms of brain state. Someone who like football will automatically select football related things from their environment. If a person holds onto a football team then when that team loses they get reflective, when it wins they celebrate. Its not the team that matters its that we hold on to it. These responses are down to the grasping that they have nurtured in themselves. If they find football a good influence in their life then they hold onto good things, but suppose they start betting and find themselves losing money then they their grasping is no longer of use.

It is this ability to nurture a holding on to things or propensities in our self, that then select aspects of the world which is what makes our life experience.

The reason that life throws at us exactly what we need is because we automatically select those things for our self! We automatically pick out of the world the things we are holding and so they become apparent.

The naïve confusion is that people think the world is solid and thrown at them, they don't realise that to actually become apparent they still need to pick things up and hold them. If we just let the world fall then nothing would stick and nothing would happen.

So when faced with a sudden panic to grab hold of something that has slipped we have this choice of whether to really pick it up again or perhaps let it go.

As said the reason for the sudden panic is that we probably did not know we were grasping it. This is how life is constantly ready to surprise and shock us. It is constantly revealing what we are holding on to.

The wise person has perfected this picking up, holding and letting go of. But to master this requires firmly opening up this fork in the road.

And this raises an interesting feature of freedom. For the naïve person freedom is the ability to pick up what they are grasping for. They see an advert for a car and start to grasp and if they have the money they can buy it and hold it. That feels like freedom. But they are really only ever going Left and so don't have true choice. This way of living will eventually throw up a problem because life will shake their hold on the car at some point and with only the Left route to explore they don't have any option but to fight to grasp it again.

Meditation is the method that is often used to open up this Right option. Imagine being in a state where we have the genuine choice of whether to pick up or put down something.

Thoughts enter our mind here.

(1) I will just get lazy and put everything down like a drop out hippie. Well perhaps what is wrong with that? The problem of course is picking up anything after this. You are only a master of this when picking thing up and putting them down are equally easy.
(2) What about the things I cherish and love. If I put them down easily then what proof is there I love them. Would my wife appreciate me "just putting down" our anniversary and saying "hey don't get so attached, chill out and let it go." I know of a similar example to this of someone in a casual relationship who said to his partner when she raised the issue of something more serious "don't get attached and don't hold onto this." Again this is like (1). The master can pick up and put down, not randomly, and not inappropriately, but with equal ease. Why would you put down your anniversary?

(2) Now there is the naïve beginner approach here. We challenge ourselves to sit under the tree meditating until we enlighten like Buddha did on the final road to enlightenment. Or we punish ourselves by denying ourselves things. And we can dream up a lot of things to do to ourselves. BUT in here lies the BIG grasping. Every single ones of these revolves around a SELF that we want to move into enlightenment, or bring enlightenment towards, and we pick up this self and we move it around like a chess piece looking for where to put it. One naïve view is that one day we will pick it up and put it in Heaven so we do lots of good things and make lots of donations in the hope that God will pick us up and move us. It's been pointed out a few times by people that no self respecting God will have anything to do with people who try to buy their way into Heaven with good deeds. What is the difference between this and handing the priest a £5 back hander to forgive our sins. But its a starting point at least so not inherently wrong.

In all these cases we have not noticed that we are grasping a self. So life will throw stuff at us again and again that shakes our hold on this self, and we panic to re-establish that hold because it never occurred to us that there is a choice of whether to pick it up or let it down. We need a self right?

Do we need a self? What was this about?

Okay this is super advanced. We may run at this and go if that is what it takes to be free then "great I can let go of myself" and we do something dramatic and sacrifice our self in some way. Perhaps we give everything we have away to the poor.

Well maybe it will work, but chances are we are just doing this because "I" want to be free. we are still doing it to liberate a "thing" that we are grasping.

The whole goal here is just to have that choice to grasp at a self or not.

Ego is the famous example of self. Ego thinks it is permanent and never changes and never dies. But life will eventually throw that utter humiliation and failure at us which will bring us to realise that this particular "ego" is wrong and inferior and we need to grow. Who thinks we are still that person who tripped up when we were 1 and still new to walking and started crying. We have grown and can now run. But there is still that over arching Ego that we hold onto that we think is more important than life potentially. Its the "holding" that we need get aware of so that we have at least that option to put down.

This blog post is actually an example of what it is talking about. I recently discovered that my services were not needed in this company. I thought they were needed and valued. So I found that it was not a completely simple operation to just put it down. I found some latency and holding going on. But rather than struggle with it, I realised the Right turn and saw much more valuable that regaining a grip on the company was to notice this grasping and in so doing be free from it. Sure I can get a new contract with the company perhaps, or perhaps a new company who knows. But right now being free to pick up and put down is the real win. And then I wrote this blog entry which unfortunately is still a grasping of sorts as I seek to cement some "gain" for a "self. One day I hope to be free enough to even let go this freedom to chose and not own it, or even celebrate it or even hold it.

===

So that final point is that we can grasp at "grasping." If we walk away thinking ok this is easy there are 2 paths we can walk: (1) the path to re-establish our grasp on something, and (2) the path to step back and observe our need to grasp and use this space to review. Of course we are now grasping at this "2 path method." That is okay at this moment probably, but if we walk away with a doctrine the way life is it will shake that doctrine from our grasp as some point and we will feel like we are back at square one. This is the "loss of faith" that everyone feels occasionally, the "dark night of the soul" as it is called in Christianity. But we can see here that all this is happening is stale habitual dogma that we have accumulated is being shaken off. The goal after all is freedom not a donkey dragging a cart of truth and dogma. This is us after we have established some truths that we like:

However very quickly a "truth" becomes a "Truth" set in stone and no longer living; it becomes a burden we must carry with us and possibly forget even so we keep remembering it and thinking about it to keep it alive. We actually erect it as a monument to our achievement and then walk off!!! What we need to do is live within the truth all the time. That means constantly not grasping and seeing everything as if it was the first time we faced it. Not-Grasping is a activity we must do all the time, just as grasping is an activity we want to do all the time. I realise my own search for truth is typified by a desire to grasp at some solidity. But now it dawns on me that this grasping is the problem it raises a complete revolution in my approach. Instead of grasping a  truth and holding it for the future, actually I should examine the need and process of grasping it in the first place!