Recovering alcoholics continue to say, “I’m an alcoholic”, even as they stay on the straight and narrow moment-to-moment, day to day, year to year. Likewise, I would have to say I’m a thinker, recovering from certainty in thought moment-to-moment, day to day, year to year. (Really! I’ve sobered up a lot. You should have seen me before.)

Of course, just like alcohol, certainty is not bad by itself.  It is all about the circumstances and magnitude. Intuitive certainty that induces me to jump out of the way of an oncoming bus, or avoid food that smells ‘off’, benefits me without fail. Certainty’s affect on thought is where things go awry. Stillness and impartiality fly out the window once the emotion of certainty begins to back up thought. At that point, the blind-spot overtakes perception and difficulties multiply.

I am a little surprised that this process isn’t more widely recognized. Especially in that we have been aware of this for ages. The clearest example is probably represented by chapter 71, to know yet to think that one does not know is best; not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty. Buddha’s also speaks to this. Much of his Noble Truths and Eight Fold Path addresses the role the mind plays in our lives.

Of course, I should be more surprised by my own naiveté.  There is simply no way that we can impartially evaluate anything that offers us pleasure. Pleasure is the bait, as Buddha said, and it creates a blind-spot around the source of that pleasure.  Can merely understanding that we intoxicate ourselves with thought help anyone sober up? I would guess probably not.

Just like the other ways we have to drink ourselves silly—shopping, eating, drugs, and so on—understanding is seldom sufficient. We must viscerally know, and such depth of knowing only comes through personally reaching rock bottom. Isn’t this a process, like  chapter 36 points out, if you would have a thing laid aside, you must first set it up? Only when a thing is fully set up are we ready to lay it aside ⁽¹⁾. Why should an addiction to certainty-of-belief be any different?

Alas, our addiction to certainty-of-belief is somewhat different and more challenging. There are obvious physical consequences to all other addictions: a glutton’s obesity; a shopper’s debt, a smoker’s cough, a drunkard’s hangovers. Not so with thought, other than the neurotic impulses from which we suffer. And even if we recognized our addiction to certainty-of-belief, what are we to do? Other sources of additions are external and can at least be kept out of reach, if not eliminated. Thinking is internal. I suppose that explains the popularity of psycho-pharmacology. Well, at least that is an improvement over getting a lobotomy.

So, if you are fed up with certainty-of-belief, then try out correlations as a sort of do-it-yourself virtual lobotomy. They may help detoxify your mind from the weight of its preconceptions as they did for me. Also effective, needless to say, can be delving the depths of the Tao Te Ching and the age-old ‘yogic’ practices (I mean yoga in the broadest sense: meditation, pranayama, bhakti yoga, hatha yoga, Buddhism, and so on.)

⁽¹⁾ That’s not altogether true. The power of an addiction is symptomatic of the degree of disconnection we feel. The more secure our sense of social connection, the less sway an addiction has upon us. Thus, improvements in our sense of connection must take some of the steam out of the ‘set it up in order to lay it aside’ process.

As I see it, thought (language, words and names) has left us with a unique sense of disconnection compared to other animal. That is the price we pay for the powerful advantages that thinking (imagination) affords us. I find it ironic that we attempt to reconnect via thought (belief in particular promises to reconnection with the One). I never found that actually worked. It is like building a castle of belief on the shifting sands of the void.

On the other hand, maybe that’s just me. After all, belief is really a symptom of deeper realities, not a solution. A loosening of certainty in belief just reflects changing realities and a declining need to hold on to any particular belief. Goodness, I suppose my thoughts on belief are shifting. Shifting sands indeed!

'He who conquers self...'

The details of Buddha’s Four Noble Truths vary somewhat depending on the source. I recently dug up the source for the version that I found most useful. Why useful? Mostly because it was the most sensible and succinct I’d seen.

Nevertheless, I had a minor problem with how the Third Noble Truth was stated, and long ago changed a word or two. Rereading my original source makes me want to revisit this and ponder why I revised in the first place. Here is the sequence of events:

The original says: “He who conquers self will be free from lust. He no longer craves and the flames of desire find no material to feed upon, thus they are extinguished.“

I changed the “conquers self” to “surrenders self”. I was immersed in the Bhagavad-Gita at the time which preaches surrender, e.g., “no man can be a Yogi who surrenders not his earthly will”. Perhaps the idea of ‘conquering self’ felt to aggressive to me.

A few years ago I thought back on that and changed it back to what I thought was the original, i.e., “He who extinguishes self will be free from lust…” Recently I came across that old book and retrieved the original ‘conquers self‘ phrase.

There is some chicken and the egg irony in this. The Second Noble Truth point out that “the illusion of self originates and manifests itself in a cleaving to things. The desire to live for the enjoyment of self … (and so on)” So just how is one suppose to ‘conquer’ an illusion? If something isn’t real, then what does conquer mean, in practice. It certainly is not the same as conquering a physical enemy coming at you with guns a-blazing.

Another peculiarity is the notion that, as the Third Truth say, “…the flames of desire find no material to feed upon thus they are extinguished”. The “material” would seem to be the self, which after being conquered is no more and thus desire has nothing to feed upon. However, as the Second Truth says, the self originates and manifests itself in clinging and desire. Lust creates the illusion of self, yet conquering self frees you from lust. This feels a little chicken and the egg-y.

I get past the chicken and egg dilema by simply keeping actively aware that my sense of self is caused by my desires and fears. The illusion has a hard time withstanding such constant clarity. Conquering self is just maintaining enough perspective to avoid being completely hoodwinked by biology, the bio-hoodwink⁽¹⁾ as I call it. In other words, the more aware I am of how biology is pulling my strings, the less convincing the illusion become. Conquering self is really a matter of seeing how the trick works. Once you clearly know how the trick (magic, illusion) works, it can no long captivate you. When the illusion of self no longer captivates, it has been conquered—or at least you’ve established a truce.

One final thought on Buddha’s Second Truth. I am inclined to rephrase it this way: “He who conquers, surrenders and understands self will be free from lust. He no longer craves and the flames of desire find no material to feed upon, thus they are extinguished.” The conquering comes first as you wage battle with yourself to ‘get your act together’. Next comes the surrendering when you realize that conquering your self is not possible, at least in the normal wage war sense of the word. Finally, seeing what is actually taking place, and understanding how a bio-hoodwink is always pulling strings diminishes the “illusion of self” enough to return to one’s roots and just be who you naturally are.

(1)bio-hoodwink: I coined this term for the trick biology plays on perception. See Peeking in on Nature’s Hoodwink. Chapter 65 says: Of old those who excelled in the pursuit of the way did not use it to enlighten the people but to hoodwink them. The oldest ‘of old’, when it comes to living things in nature, is the biological process of life, ‘hoodwinks’ and all.

For example, a bio-hoodwink tells the brain that the richer the food (and the more you eat) the better. This was the case in the wild before we cleverly devised ways around natural limitations in order to make food as rich and plentiful as we wished. Alas, the bio-hoodwink is inherited and out of sync with human willful innovation. The only counter-measure we have against this is understanding, which explains why Buddha put Right Understanding at the head of his Eight Fold Path.

The common view is to see all this as being what makes us unique, special, superior, advanced… “higher beings” no less. Looking at this from a symptoms point of view helps me avoid such a “pat myself on the back” biases.

For example, my yoga contortions are simply a convenient, efficient way for me to compensate for the lack of nature’s pushback. Nature is always pushing back on living creatures in the wild, preventing them from willfully innovating to the point of imbalance. When doing yoga in India, I noticed how it was only the wealthy Indians, by and large, who had the time, inclination, and need to do yoga. The lower classes had their hands full with basic survival.

All cultural taboos and ethical proscriptions are symptomatic of our effort to find balance. Namely, we follow taboos and proscriptions as a means to counterbalance the instability wrought by civilization. Not civilization as it is commonly defined, however. Seen more deeply, civilization is simply the result of an overwhelming use of tools and language. The resulting disconnection from natural forces creates severe sociological and psychological instability. Oddly, all this goes on without us ever having any underlying sense of why. Perhaps this is one reason why a tipping point eventually comes, and a new set of taboos and proscriptions replaces the old ones.

Generally, the activities we pursue most, are driven by the natural instinct to take the easy way. In the wild, this seldom leads to difficulties. Natural difficulty is already pushing back. In civilized life, we’ve stripped away as many nature-induced difficulties as possible. However, the original instinct to take the easy way remains part of our DNA. As a result we swing dreadfully out of balance.

Generally, the activities we pursue that are difficult are driven by the natural inclination to want to feel life meaningful, ‘Right’ and in balance. Like a pendulum willfully riding the waves of fear and need, we swing one way and the other, constantly seeking the happier Middle Way. As I see it, there is nothing really “unique, special, superior, advanced” about us. All we are doing is struggling to maintain enough balance on the one hand, to compensate for all our success at freeing ourselves from Nature’s ruthless side on the other hand.

This is not such a flattering view of us, I know. We prefer the “positive” story we’ve created for ourselves, like how we are “created in Gods image” and the like. Does our self serving, self aggrandizing view serve us well in the end? I can’t help but think not really. Honestly considering life with as much impartiality as possible can only benefit us in the long run. After all, Right Understanding is the first fold on the Buddha’s eight fold middle way. Taking the effort to consider life from symptoms point of view is a step in that direction.

(this is the working title and draft cover)

I wrote this Yoga manual^[1] in 1979. While it still holds up well, I decided it’s worth updating. As part of this, I am attempting to sum up the Principles (the “spirit of yoga”) as I see it today.

Yoga is a process, not a destination. So many folks think of yoga as something you need flexibility for. Just the opposite. If anything, the more flexible you are, the harder yoga becomes. Again, unlike most secular things in life, yoga isn’t about the destination. It is about the journey…the way.

PRINCIPLES

(from an older and perhaps wiser point of view)

I wrote this Yoga manual in 1979. Now, 30 years later, it still holds up well. I’ve decided to leave the original introductory pages mostly as is, especially PRINCIPLES (from a younger point of view). These reflect my youthful belief in free will … that anything is possible if I set my mind to it. Naturally, it reads a bit strident, naively so from my point of view today. Yet, its message may offer a useful perspective.

Ideal Free Will

Soon after I finished the manual, I began to question my faith in free will^[2], and I began earnestly searching for evidence of it. So far, I’ve found nothing in human behavior that can not be explained by a simpler motivation—the biological push-pull force of need/fear. In the end, free will appears to be a case of wishful thinking more than fact. It seems that I just needed to believe in free will. Why?

Conflicting needs (or fears) was the problem, and free will promised a solution. If, as it now appears, free will is no more than a promise, what can I do? Ironically, I’ve found hope lies in knowing that the strongest need (or fear) I feel at the moment determines what I do (or don’t do). Paradoxically, this makes ‘free will’ and need/fear almost synonymous, i.e., need and fear determine what I want, and what I worry about. Need and fear, wanting and worrying are as interdependent as muscle and bone.

Actual Free Will

Happily, the resolution of conflicting needs (or fears) depends largely upon me being mindful of what I truly want of life. And what is that? Honestly, I’ve always known what I want deep down. We all have (and do), intuitively anyway. It is just that short term desires and worries keep distracting us. We forget again and again, turning over one new leaf after another as we wander and stumble down life’s very short road.

Prioritizing desires counteracts this distraction by diminishing desire’s (and worry’s) impact on us. In doing this, we are effectively desiring not to desire. As the Tao Te Ching puts it: “Therefore the sage desires not to desire, and does not value goods which are hard to come by”… (64).

Watch Your Self

If I had to sum up the secret of yoga, I’d say it all comes down to watchfulness—or as Buddha said, Right Mindfulness, Right Attentiveness, Right Concentration. In a yoga posture, this means watching your body, mind and emotion moment to moment. Are you pushing too hard, (too ‘Ha’), or taking it too easy (too ‘Tha’)? All you need do is watch for these lapses from the ‘middle path’, and go the other way… towards balance.

Watching oneself honestly couldn’t be easier or more straightforward. This is a level playing field, perhaps the only one in life—no knowledge, skill, teaching, or innate talent is required. And yet, as the Tao Te Ching says, “Our words are very easy to understand and very easy to put into practice, yet no one in the world can understand them or put them into practice”… (70). Okay, that may be an over-statement, but not by much. Living in watchful self-honesty is most difficult.

Why? Because every innate advantage we have has its downside. I can’t emphasize this enough; every plus we enjoy has a minus we suffer. Worse yet, what we think is so gets in the way of seeing what is actually so. We fool ourselves. As the Tao Te Ching puts it, “To know yet to think that one does not know is best; Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty.“…(71).

Balance

Individually, we are on both sides of balance’s happy medium—over-doing some areas, under-doing other areas. Clearly, balance lies in under-doing the former and over-doing the later. And fortunately, despite fears to the contrary, there’s little chance of overcompensating in either direction. Why?

The areas where we innately under-do or over-do are actually symptomatic of our primal ‘inner’ nature. That means, unlike the tip of an iceberg, it changes little. Sure, we may think we can change, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg talking. Like free will, the ideal of true change is more likely a case of wishful thinking.

Is it Karma?

Our primal nature is like an iceberg below the water line, massive and unseen. As it bobs and tilts one direction, we react by ‘over-doing’ or ‘under-doing’ in the opposite direction to counterbalance. Deeper down our primal nature may itself be counterbalancing still deeper currents. Who knows—it’s a little murky down there.

This whole balancing process may represent a kernel of truth in the myth of Karma—not a cause and effect chain of Karmic past and future, but of ‘karmic’ layers of cause and effect… moment to moment. This is where balance lives, without memory, past or future. Only now!

One practical consequence of seeing life this way is that you soon realize all your perceptions and actions are merely reflections of yourself. In other words, what you perceive or do ‘out there’ is really symptomatic of your own needs/fears (a.k.a. loves/hates) deep down ‘in here’ right now.

Self-honesty floods awareness; the judge becomes the judged. Judging books by their covers becomes increasingly difficult when you realize that you are just perceiving symptoms of a deep, less definable other side. Such a blurring of distinction, (”mysterious sameness” as the Tao Te Ching puts it) can really help you avoid being knocked off balance by self-serving judgments and biases.

Thinking beats the drum

Of human emotions, desire is the one with which all religions take issue. As the Tao Te Ching puts it, “There is no crime greater than having too many desires; There is no disaster greater than not being content”… (46)

However, I say desire is not the real problem, per se. Viewed more closely, desire seems to be a amalgamation of instinctive emotion (’gut’ need) and thinking. Without that thinking side, we’d be moved by spontaneous need  just like all other animals. Need (and its source spring, fear) is the driving force behind all action. Without it we’re dead—literally. It is the thinking side of desire we could (and should) have misgivings about. Thinking beats the drum of emotion, easily making mountains out of molehills (of need and fear).

Just look at the world: From political and religious extremists at one end, down to the little neurotic quirks, opinions and bias that are common to everyone at the other end. All illustrate the consequences of overly trusting that what we think is true. However, when we take thought with a grain of salt, it becomes easier to calm down and preserve emotional equilibrium.

But, who am I kidding? This is a tough nut to crack. Those primal emotions (need and fear) drive thinking. To make matters worse, thinking feeds back into and reinforces emotion. It is a vicious cycle. Still, contemporaneously knowing this is going on as I think helps me distrust thinking, even as I’m thinking. This lack of faith in thought weakens its ability to feed into and re-enforce emotion.

Civilization’s price tag

One of the primary functions of civilization is providing the means to achieve our goals and satisfy our desires. To meet this end, civilization must side-step nature’s wild ruthless side—a side which happens to help keep life balanced. It’s not surprising that our nearly obsessive avoidance of nature’s uncomfortable side increases our difficulty maintaining balance. No wonder we easily swing from one extreme to the other. Civilization’s endless blind pursuit of safety and comfort comes with unforeseen, unwanted, and unpleasant consequences. We only think we’ve conquered nature; the negative consequences prove otherwise.

I have a motto to help me counteract civilization’s safety and comfort bias and keep me more grounded: “Short term pain; [leads to] long term pleasure. Short term pleasure; [leads to] long term pain”. Civilization is biased towards the later. Balance lies in accepting the former. That is the principle essence of yoga for me—balance.

The Spirit of Yoga

Through these Principles I’ve tried to convey the spirit of yoga. Now the ball is in your court. When you do yoga postures deep amid this spirit, you will be truly doing yoga no matter how stiff, weak, or far from the ideal form you are.

Conversely, yoga done without this spirit, is not yoga… no matter how much it looks like yoga. It is merely exercise, which isn’t bad—it’s just not yoga. Naturally, no one else will know. Only you can know when you are too ‘Ha’, or too ‘Tha’. Only you can fear your imbalance and feel the need to tilt yourself in the other direction…towards balance and what you truly want.

^[1] If you are doing or would like to do yoga, download these two PDF’s for instructions on the first few dozen beginning yoga postures.

Hatha Yoga: Principles and Precautions and Hatha Yoga: Programs 1 & 2

I went on considering other facets of life: work, eating, speaking, shopping, etc. In all cases balance is possible, but is often only partial and so, seldom exquisite. Why? It is such a wonderful sensation!

One clue is impartiality, another aspect of balance, and as we know…

Impartiality [leads] to kingliness,
Kingliness to heaven,
Heaven to the way,
The way to perpetuity,
And to the end of one’s days one will meet with no danger.

So, why so rare? Balance and impartiality come about when we lean neither one way or the other. Need (desire) and fear (worry) undermine this exquisite middle path constantly. And why not? Nature (evolution) has no interest in fostering impartiality and balance. I regard this as nature’s primary hoodwink: As chapter 65 points out, Of old those who excelled in the pursuit of the way did not use it to enlighten the people but to hoodwink them. The reason why the people are difficult to govern is that they are too clever. For me, what is more “of old” than Mother Nature?

Our need to survive and the fear of perceived threats keeps us always leaning one way or the other. Desires draw us to what is favorable and away from what is not. We are innately biased from birth. Interestingly, this dynamic play itself out in physical balance⁽¹⁾ as well (e.g., Tai Chi, Yoga balance postures, etc.). Maintaining exquisite physical balance is very much the same as knowing when to stop eating, drinking, talking, or ___(you name it)___. The best solution I’ve found is being aware that this tug-of-war is always going on, 24/7. The more I can cease to desire and remain still, the more often I return to that exquisite balance I treasure.

Of course, there in lies the problem of balance and impartiality. You have to experience balance to realize its exquisite nature. But, balance requires us to cease to desire and remain still, at least somewhat, which is only possible to the degree we yearn for that exquisite experience. It is ‘catch 22‘. Instead, Nature’s hoodwink keeps us chasing after the pot of gold at the end of our rainbow. The illusion we feel is that once we get the pot of gold, balance and peace will be ours. Of course, the gold vanishes the moment we claim it, and off we go chasing after the next rainbow.

To be fair, the illusions that drive need are essential to survival, and so the most balanced goal one can entertain is to maintain a balance between the inevitable illusions necessary for survival, and a degree of impartiality essential for sanity.

⁽¹⁾ This may account for the special value in activities carried on over a life time practice. For me this has mainly been Yoga, Shakuhachi, Tai Chi. They all embody the principle of ‘short term pain, long term pleasure‘, and as the decades roll by I am witnessing more and more of that long term pleasure side. Alas, following the ‘short term pain, long term pleasure‘ side, rather than the ‘short term pleasure, long term pain‘ side of life is difficult. Pleasure is one of life’s prime motivating forces, and so the ’short term pleasure’ side tips the scales more that we’d like. It doesn’t help that civilization goes out of its way to make short term pleasure as easy as possible to indulge ourselves in.

Grandma, 82, reading the paper

The use of chairs in the West is ubiquitous. One of the most important life style changes I ever made was giving up my use of the chair fifty years ago. Chairs (and sit down toilets) are good examples of my motto, ‘short term pleasure attracts long term pain; short term pain attracts long term pleasure‘. The physical ease a chair provides gradually robs the body of an important part of its natural capability. Over time that bring long term pain. This is easy to see, for example, by comparing older Western people with older Japan people.

The photo above is of my son Kyle’s Japanese friend’s grandmother. She’s 82 and much more flexible than many Western people half (or dare I say 1/4) her age. So, what is so good about being flexible? Oh the list is so long; I’ll spare you. Besides, I think the long term pleasurable benefits are obvious to most. I suppose people just don’t realize in their youth how the use of chairs will greatly exacerbate loss of flexibility.

Flossing, forward bending, and studying

The benefits of maintaining flexibility, subtle though they may be, add to the quality of life throughout life.  So, become more natural and animal like, and throw out your chairs. Take the lower position.

For another angle on this see also my recent post:  Bathtub Tai Chi

Bathtub Tai Chi

I have found that multitasking is generally inefficient. My desire to do more and more (rather than less and less) deceives me into thinking I can actually accomplish more and more doing various tasks simultaneously. This make is almost impossible to  be as careful at the end as at the beginning, no matter what I am doing. Well, I finally have learned my lesson. I’m not sure it is learning that accounts for my increased wisdom in this matter. More likely it is because I’m older and have less energy to run around chasing after desires as in my youth.

Kyle's Family Friendly Version

However, I feel that there is one avenue of multitasking that really does pay off.  Maintaining good posture while doing things is multitasking in that you have to ‘keep centered’ all the while. The photo above shows another version of multitasking – drying off after a bath and training balance simultaneously⁽¹⁾. Balance becomes increasingly important as we age, and doing something to counter the deterioration of balance that creeps up on us over the years makes sense.

Sitting on the floor either erect, with a bit of a forward bend, or other ‘yoga like’ things counters some of the negative side of sedentary activity.  In the photo here I am flossing my teeth, reading Science News, and bending forward. Three activities done simultaneously and additive (neither interferes with the other, as far as I see).

Forward bending, flossing and studing

I expect the reason this kind of multitasking is additive is that the activities are duties, not desire driven pleasures or goals, except for my wish to do what is right for my body.  The wish to do what is ‘right’ must be the core definition of Buddha’s Fourth Truth:  “… whose will is bent on what he ought to do, whose sole desire is the performance of his duty…” .

⁽¹⁾ The smiley face version of my was son Kyle’s creation. It is surprising how modest both my sons are. Perhaps it’s a reaction to how little concern I have for such things. To see a humorous take on this, see  their weekly video blog, The Abbott-y Blogcast.

Leaving Meiji park after yoga

After settling down in Tokyo, I began going the humungous Meiji park to do yoga in the morning before work. While standing on my head and watching people walking off in the distance, I noticed something very odd. The people had an obvious bob in their gate as they walked. Initially I wondered if they were walking that way on purpose for I’d never seen such a sight before. Then I realized I’d never actually watched people walking while doing the headstand.

All it took for me to see our human way of walking as it actually occurs was a 180 degree (upside down) change of perspective. These days it is difficult for me to notice this ‘bob’ in people, when I do yoga down at the beach. The novelty wore off; I guess familiarity breeds blindness.

The moral here for me: I must counteract familiarity to see the world anew, and sometimes to even see the world as it may actually be. So pray tell, how can I counteract familiarity?

Trusting language (words and names) helps impart a sense of familiarity. The more I trust it, the more readily I think that one know. The upside: This makes me feel more secure with ‘reality’. The downside: This deaden my proper sense of awe.

I say, give me a sense of awe any day!  Mystery upon mystery – The gateway of the manifold secrets.

Never-the-less, cultures place great importance on the teacher, so what makes for a good teacher? Usually the answer centers on how capable the teacher is, and their command of the material. However, after home schooling my kids, I discovered the more important, yet under-recognized, side of teaching lay deeper.

Home schooling turned out well for my children. This was obviously not due to my command of the material. Sure, in some areas I have sufficiently knowledge, in others just minimal. Either way, I never really ‘taught’ them much of anything, at least overtly. The key to my ‘teaching’ success was simply not getting in their way! That allowed them to follow their curiosity. However, that doesn’t mean total laze fare. I was ‘right there’, but in a shadowy presence kind of way.

For example, Luke was learning computer programming, and whenever he ran into ‘insurmountable’ difficulty he would come to me. I know next to nothing factual on the subject; I would just be a sounding board, occasionally asking questions, or offering observations, based upon my overall life experience. It is amazing how well this approach actually works. The only true requirement was being patient and connected (i.e., generally curious and interested).

In fact, I reckon my sons have learned what they know more through what I didn’t say than anything I said. Does this have anything to do with the teaching that uses no words? I suppose, though even calling it that can become misleading.

Knowing when not to say something (teach) is most important, by far. That allows one to stumble as a child, which is how we all learn to walk and talk! Just imagine if your parents had hovered over you correcting every misstep as you learned to walk or to talk? Not fun! Not helpful! Not efficient! Doing it ‘wrong’ is essential part of finding how to do it ‘right’. Robbing them of that opportunity, while it might have felt helpful, I knew would actually hinder them.

I only set the overall tone of the environment, and refrained from micromanaging anything. This, allowed them to take on as much responsibility as they wished, no more and no less. This let them fulfill whatever innate potential they had. As our good book says, do not constrict their living space; do not press down on their means of livelihood. It is because you do not press down on them that they will not weary of the burden.

All things considered, I reckon that the social component accounts for 99% in teaching, while the teacher’s command of the material just 1%. This makes sense if you accept the proposition that one can only understand what one already knows intuitively. Granted, that is an impossible pill to swallow in a culture, like ours, that sees students as empty vessels into which knowledge can somehow be poured. Rather than pour knowledge in, the trick is to have conducive social circumstances which draw on a student’s thirst and intuitive knowing. Objective understanding and know-how come in due course naturally.

Finally let’s go back to the question of thirst, and whether a person truly wants to learn, or is thirsty for something else. They say it is better to teach a man to fish than give him a fish. But, what if he rather be given a fish than be taught? The former, being given a fish, is perhaps far more common, 99% to 1% more common in fact. Giving and receiving fish is a far more socially achievable relationship than giving and receiving a teaching. Furthermore, our deepest need (thirst), bar none, is for social connection, not for knowledge per se. Yet knowledge is held in the highest esteem; knowledge is power! All that is needed to bypass this kink in the way is sufficient cultural hoodwinking to make receiving of fish appear like receiving of teaching. Yep, a lot of hoodwinking goes on in human social interactions.

Back in the late 70’s I began teaching yoga. I soon noticed how many of my students began to see me as their guru. I was trying to teach them the yoga equivalent of teach a man to fish. Most weren’t thirsty for that; they wanted the yoga equivalent of being given a fish, and seeing me a their guru was one way to get that. I’m not saying this was intentional on their part. Far from it; it was simply innate social (tribal) dynamics. Personally, I couldn’t oblige them, and couldn’t help but do what I could to discourage it. Alas, I wasn’t thirsty for that type of teacher/student relationship⁽¹⁾. I suppose I am drawn to neither ‘a leader or a follower be’; ‘neither a hood-winker or hood-winkee be’. Perhaps…

I alone am foolish and uncouth.
I alone am different from others
And value being fed by the mother.

⁽¹⁾ That changed some with my own family and kids though. As a father, I naturally fell into the role of leader and teacher, albeit in a shadowy presence kind of way. I imagine that civilization is just too ‘mega’ for me to feel connected. A small hunter gather group around 20,000 b.c. would have been more my speed.

Background
Memories become dimmer as the years fly by. Many are even too misty to write down without filling in the voids with poetic license (fiction). Still, I’ve set out to fetch what memories remain before they fade any further. See: The Further One Goes for background on this ‘Times of Yore’ series.

Why this endless debate over the best way to approach life – what to do, and how to do it? The first thing I notice is how it draws those of like-mind together and pushes those of unlike-mind apart. It seems we are driven to project our own preferences and inclinations onto others. This keeps the social pot stirred, so to speak. No doubt our social-tribal instinct is pulling off this bio-hoodwink(1)

I only began to come to gripes with this hoodwink when I studied astrology. That opened me up to the idea that people might be fundamentally different! Fundamentally? Not really, yet it can feel fundamental thanks to the bio-hoodwink. In truth, people are the same the world over at the deepest level. They just take different paths to reach the ‘Rome’.

This egalitarian view corresponds to the major branches of yoga: Raja (meditation), Karma (action), Jnana (science in the broadest sense from the Latin scientia, meaning “knowledge”), Bhakti (devotion), and Hatha (forceful). Yoga literally means yoking, merging, joining. The ‘Rome’ we are attempting to reach is the yoking, merging and joining with (?). This (?) is known by various names: God, Spirit, Tao, Enlightenment… It doesn’t matter what name you give ‘Rome’. ‘Rome’ by any other name is still ‘Rome’. We all want to get to ‘Rome’. However, each person is drawn to ways that suit their nature and cultural conditioning(2).

Now, when I view nature on its terms, I fail to see any good or bad (or better, best, worse, worst). That tells me that good and bad are simply projections of personal preference. Being a tribal species, seeing with such impartiality doesn’t come easily, but boy is it ever peaceful when it does! Indeed, it is the way of heaven to show no favoritism.

(1) bio-hoodwink: I coined this term for the trick biology plays on perception. Chapter 65 says: Of old those who excelled in the pursuit of the way did not use it to enlighten the people but to hoodwink them. The oldest ‘of old’, when it comes to living things in nature, is the biological process of life, ‘hoodwinks’ and all.

For example, a bio-hoodwink tells the brain that the richer the food (and the more you eat) the better. This was the case in the wild before we cleverly devised ways around natural limitations to make food as rich and plentiful as we wished. Alas, the bio-hoodwink is inherited and out of sync with human willful innovation.

As far as ‘enlighten the people goes’, what natural need is there for such a thing? As I see it, nature simply ‘needs’ to drive interaction between living things, and uses bio-hoodwinking as a means to that end. Again, when I view nature on its terms, I fail to see any enlightenment or ignorance there as well. Aren’t these projections of personal preference also? Don’t these ideals reflect our wish to escape the tension we feel? Ironically, the uniquely human tension we experience is a result of trusting the good, bad, beauty, ugly, enlightenment, ignorance paradigm in the first place.

(2) Personally, I am drawn to all the yoga paths except devotional yoga. I just inherited a thicker less social skin than ‘normal’. And of these paths, I am most drawn to Jnana, which explains my respect for Buddha. Buddha laid out the dynamics of the bio-hoodwink in his second truth: The cause of suffering is lust. The surrounding world affects sensation and begets a craving thirst that clamors for immediate satisfaction. The illusion of self originates and manifests itself in a cleaving to things. The desire to live for the enjoyment of self entangles us in a net of sorrows. Pleasures are the bait and the result is pain. It doesn’t get any more straightforward than that.