This is the perfect opportunity to get some private time together and
talk. We didn't just get in the car and
drive
around aimlessly. There's a place we have to get to, a place we would
have
driven
to anyway. This then is the perfect opportunity to combine two things:
driving
to where we're going, and talking. If we weren't having this
conversation, we'd be having another one. If it wasn't me who was the
party to this conversation, it would have been someone else.
I'm fascinated by his ideas about our
internal
states
- you know, our feelings, our moods etc, all those
emotional experiences which seem to come over us whether
we want them to or not. I really get where he's coming from when he
speaks, in contradistinction to being overcome by our
internal states,
about
mastery
as
"living life where it actually happens"
ie as "living life
out-here".
In this regard, the best way to not embolden the
internal states
is to simply leave them alone and just ... be ...
out ...
HERE.
As for a powerful statement with which to address the
internal states,
(which is to say, as for a powerful statement to try on
with which to address the
internal states),
how about
"So what?!"?
Now, not everyone is going to warm immediately to
"So what?!"
addressed to their own
internal states.
But for those who do warm to it, for those who do get it, it's truly
awesome - completely, totally, and utterly awesome. That's really
something, actually: to be able to look inside your own
head (so to speak), and to be big enough to be
able to say, above all the cacophony of noise produced by all the
internal states
vying for your
attention,
"So what?!".
If after trying it on,
"So what?!"
isn't palatable, or if it lands as unnecessarily harsh or callous (it's
actually neither, but if it lands that way for you), then
"Thank you for sharing!"
works
just as well. But listen: both
"So what?!"
and "Thank you for sharing!" will only start gaining lasting leverage
and power once you've become familiar with and grounded in his
distinction
"out-here"
as the
context
for both statements
"So what?!"
and "Thank you for sharing!".
He's not looking at me when he says it. He's looking out the window at
something I can't determine other than it's somewhere in the far
distance. When he says it, what he's implying ie what he's getting at,
hits me like a thunderbolt. It's an occasion
mirrored
exactly in the daily goings on of a
Zenmonastery.
I'm momentarily caught off guard. The
master,
leaping out of hiding when I'm least expecting him (the
Zenmaster's
training
mostly targets
attention
lapses),
whacks
me on the shoulder with a wooden broadsword. A link in the chain which
binds my existing
epistemology
in place, snaps - it simply snaps.
What?! I can't believe it. Did he just equate my feelings,
my moods etc did he just equate all those emotional experiences and
internal states
which seem to come over me whether I want them to or not, with the
weather? ... and the weather isn't personal
- like
"You don't ask 'Why me?' when it's
raining"?
It's an idea with enough power to totally alter my experience of living
as I know it ie to totally alter our experience of living
as we know it.
And he's right: I don't ask "Why me?" when it's
raining.
I do, however, ask "Why me?" (in some form or another) when those
feelings, moods, and emotional experiences come over me ie when those
internal states
run wild. I do, in spite of myself, take them personally. His idea, on
the other hand, regards them just like the changing weather which never
evokes a "Why me?" from me, and for which there's never any suggestion
I take it personally.
It's rocking
my world.
At first, all I can say is "Wow! ...". Then I start to speak
more - but I
change my mind
and remain silent instead. There's actually nothing else to say. For
the first time I notice the
quietpurr of the car's
engine.
He's still looking out the window at something I don't know in the far
distance. This is one of those
marvelous
out of time moments when the car seems to be
standing still
and it's the
road
which is coming fast toward us.