"Eastern Wisdom and Modern Life" Things and Thinks

1 00:00:09,343 --> 00:00:12,804 We were talking last time about the extraordinary conflict between man 2 00:00:12,930 --> 00:00:16,350 and nature, which exists among almost all highly civilized peoples. 3 00:00:21,605 --> 00:00:24,858 And especially here in the Western world, where we talk so much about our 4 00:00:24,983 --> 00:00:28,612 conquest of nature, our mastery of space, our subjection of the physical world. 5 00:00:35,077 --> 00:00:38,872 And I think one of the main reasons why we feel in this particular way 6 00:00:38,997 --> 00:00:45,128 is that each individual experiences himself as a peculiarly separate being. 7 00:00:45,254 --> 00:00:52,261 In other words, every man thinks of this world as a collection of objects. 8 00:00:54,972 --> 00:01:01,979 The world is a lot of things, and each person considers himself as a thing. 9 00:01:03,063 --> 00:01:06,984 And I wonder if you've ever stopped to ask yourself what a thing is, 10 00:01:07,109 --> 00:01:11,655 and why you think you are a thing. 11 00:01:11,780 --> 00:01:16,326 Are you quite sure that you are a thing? 12 00:01:17,995 --> 00:01:21,248 Because if we take a look at ourselves from another point of view, 13 00:01:21,373 --> 00:01:25,002 for example like this, we shall find that we are not one thing at all. 14 00:01:31,466 --> 00:01:33,969 We're an extraordinary number of things. 15 00:01:34,094 --> 00:01:35,887 For what you're looking at there 16 00:01:36,013 --> 00:01:39,224 is the cell structure of your own body. 17 00:01:39,349 --> 00:01:45,188 A whole multitude of tiny, tiny little individuals. 18 00:01:48,108 --> 00:01:55,115 And now, we might ask again, what other points of view could we take to ourselves? 19 00:01:57,617 --> 00:02:01,038 We could of course take the sociologist's point of view, where 20 00:02:01,163 --> 00:02:04,833 we're not really a thing at all, but a sub-member of a group. 21 00:02:04,958 --> 00:02:08,587 Or still more, if a man visiting us from another planet in something like a flying saucer were 22 00:02:08,712 --> 00:02:12,424 to hover down and look at what sort of creature is inhabiting this Earth, what would he see? 23 00:02:18,096 --> 00:02:21,266 Let's take a look and get some idea of his view. 24 00:02:21,391 --> 00:02:24,811 This is the kind of creature he would find inhabiting this planet. 25 00:02:24,936 --> 00:02:31,193 A sprawly, nubbly thing with various lines connecting bits of it. 26 00:02:31,318 --> 00:02:33,612 That would be, in his view, 27 00:02:33,737 --> 00:02:36,406 the kind of thing that we are. 28 00:02:36,531 --> 00:02:43,538 For you see, how many things we are depends upon the point of view which one takes. 29 00:02:45,248 --> 00:02:48,877 Every point of view that we've taken, the point of view of the cells, the point of view of the 30 00:02:49,002 --> 00:02:52,672 man hovering above the earth in a flying saucer or an airplane, is a correct point of view. 31 00:02:55,217 --> 00:03:01,515 And according to the way in which we look, so we divide the things of the world. 32 00:03:01,640 --> 00:03:03,433 For you see, 33 00:03:03,558 --> 00:03:08,939 It's interesting, isn't it, that the word thing is very like the word think. 34 00:03:09,064 --> 00:03:11,900 Because by breaking down our world into 35 00:03:12,025 --> 00:03:15,362 things is the way in which we think about it. 36 00:03:15,487 --> 00:03:18,865 We break down what we call the material world into objects and 37 00:03:18,990 --> 00:03:22,494 assign to those objects the kind of words we describe as nouns. 38 00:03:29,000 --> 00:03:32,129 And then the world of action we break into events. 39 00:03:32,254 --> 00:03:37,843 And assigned to events the kind of word we call verbs. 40 00:03:37,968 --> 00:03:41,054 But things and events are fundamentally the ways of 41 00:03:41,179 --> 00:03:44,975 breaking up our complex world so that we can think about it. 42 00:03:49,855 --> 00:03:53,108 I wonder if any of you have ever been to a psychologist and taken a 43 00:03:53,233 --> 00:03:56,862 Rorach test and been asked to look at one of these extraordinary blots. 44 00:04:02,325 --> 00:04:05,787 Now actually the block that we're looking at here isn't a real Rorschach block because 45 00:04:05,912 --> 00:04:09,833 you're not allowed to show them in public in case people saw them before the test. 46 00:04:09,958 --> 00:04:12,043 But they're something like this. 47 00:04:12,169 --> 00:04:14,546 And they're made by splodging ink on paper and folding 48 00:04:14,671 --> 00:04:16,965 the paper over so that you get a symmetrical block. 49 00:04:17,090 --> 00:04:19,009 And the psychologist says to you when you look at 50 00:04:19,134 --> 00:04:21,219 that, now please will you tell me a story about it? 51 00:04:21,344 --> 00:04:23,138 What do you think it looks like? 52 00:04:23,263 --> 00:04:26,099 And you might say, well I think it looks like a great big cat face. 53 00:04:26,224 --> 00:04:27,976 Or maybe it's a woman's handbag. 54 00:04:28,101 --> 00:04:31,897 Or maybe it's a dancer waving his arms in front of a pair of pine trees. 55 00:04:32,022 --> 00:04:34,858 With some rocks around, all sorts of stories 56 00:04:34,983 --> 00:04:37,903 you could invent about it, anything you like. 57 00:04:38,028 --> 00:04:41,781 And the psychologist will use the kind of information that you've given him, the sort of things that you 58 00:04:41,907 --> 00:04:46,036 project out of your own mind into that blot, and he will then form some diagnosis of the kind of person you are. 59 00:04:48,000 --> 00:04:54,074 60 00:04:55,712 --> 00:04:58,757 But you see, he's not interested in the information which 61 00:04:58,882 --> 00:05:01,968 you give him about the blot as a description of the blot. 62 00:05:02,093 --> 00:05:07,807 He's interested in what you say as a description of what is going on inside you. 63 00:05:07,933 --> 00:05:11,520 In other words, what you are saying about that blot is a projection 64 00:05:11,645 --> 00:05:14,940 of yourself into its strange and complicated conformations. 65 00:05:19,027 --> 00:05:22,447 Now you see, our whole world is in many ways 66 00:05:22,572 --> 00:05:26,201 not so very much unlike this peculiar blot. 67 00:05:26,326 --> 00:05:32,165 And you might think that there might be some persuasive person who stands up and 68 00:05:32,290 --> 00:05:38,380 gives a story about the blot of the world, and other people agree with what he says. 69 00:05:38,505 --> 00:05:43,218 He says, look here, that's a mountain, that's a tree, that's a rock. 70 00:05:43,343 --> 00:05:45,971 And everybody else would agree because he was so persuasive. 71 00:05:46,096 --> 00:05:53,436 And we would all be beginning to give the same story about the cosmic Rorschach blot. 72 00:05:53,562 --> 00:05:58,233 Because after all, our world is a very wiggly affair. 73 00:05:58,358 --> 00:06:01,820 Consider, for example, clouds. 74 00:06:06,908 --> 00:06:13,915 Or clouds with mountains across them, or waters, or stars. 75 00:06:25,885 --> 00:06:30,932 All the world is a wiggly affair. 76 00:06:33,059 --> 00:06:36,146 Not at all unlike that block we were looking at. 77 00:06:36,271 --> 00:06:41,860 And we have to find out ways of making sense of it. 78 00:06:41,985 --> 00:06:45,822 Perhaps one of the things that men first, one of the strangest and most difficult to understand things that 79 00:06:45,947 --> 00:06:49,993 men first began to make sense of in this kind of Rorschach blot interpretation way were the stars in heaven. 80 00:06:59,085 --> 00:07:04,090 And one of the ways in which they did this was to project 81 00:07:04,215 --> 00:07:08,094 Upon the skies, figures of all kinds of mythological monsters and beasts, such as the idea of a dipper for the 82 00:07:08,219 --> 00:07:12,223 great bear, those stars in the great bear that look, you know, like a ladle, or some people call them the plow. 83 00:07:24,527 --> 00:07:27,989 Or here, perhaps on a celestial sphere of this kind, you can see 84 00:07:28,114 --> 00:07:31,534 quite clearly the outline of the constellation Leo, the lion. 85 00:07:32,786 --> 00:07:34,829 A lion drawn in the sky. 86 00:07:34,954 --> 00:07:38,291 So that men could find their way about in the stars, recognize their 87 00:07:38,416 --> 00:07:41,961 outlines by associating certain groups of stars with familiar images. 88 00:07:46,591 --> 00:07:49,678 But you see, this is fundamentally a projection 89 00:07:49,803 --> 00:07:52,555 of ideas out of our own minds onto nature. 90 00:07:52,681 --> 00:07:54,099 Nature itself 91 00:07:54,224 --> 00:07:57,310 will take all kinds of different projections, 92 00:07:57,435 --> 00:08:00,188 and no one is necessarily the right one. 93 00:08:00,313 --> 00:08:03,858 They work for us so long as we agree about them, 94 00:08:03,983 --> 00:08:07,320 that is, so long as we abide by convention. 95 00:08:08,488 --> 00:08:11,741 And in Indian philosophy, the fundamental word 96 00:08:11,866 --> 00:08:15,495 for this kind of thing is the Sanskrit term maya. 97 00:08:21,418 --> 00:08:25,630 I'm going to write that down for you. 98 00:08:33,346 --> 00:08:36,057 Pronounced maya. 99 00:08:38,351 --> 00:08:45,358 And this word comes from a root in the Sanskrit language, ma. 100 00:08:53,158 --> 00:08:56,745 And the word ma is at the basis of all kinds 101 00:08:56,870 --> 00:09:00,415 of words that we use in our own tongue. 102 00:09:00,540 --> 00:09:03,752 It's at the basis of matter, 103 00:09:03,877 --> 00:09:07,380 of the Latin mater, or mother, at the basis of matrix, or metric, 104 00:09:07,505 --> 00:09:10,884 because the fundamental meaning of the root ma is to measure. 105 00:09:17,307 --> 00:09:21,436 And so it works in this sort of way. 106 00:09:23,396 --> 00:09:26,775 I was talking about our world being wiggly. 107 00:09:26,900 --> 00:09:30,320 You know, something like this. 108 00:09:33,156 --> 00:09:37,869 That is the typical sort of shape that we are having to deal with all the time. 109 00:09:37,994 --> 00:09:39,913 And I think you'll see at once that a shape like 110 00:09:40,038 --> 00:09:41,998 that is extraordinarily difficult to talk about. 111 00:09:42,123 --> 00:09:46,044 If I were talking on the radio at the moment and not on television, I would have the greatest difficulty in describing 112 00:09:46,169 --> 00:09:50,089 that line to you in such a way that you could write it down on a piece of paper in front of you without seeing it. 113 00:09:55,887 --> 00:10:01,893 But here you can see it, and you can understand it at once. 114 00:10:02,018 --> 00:10:04,562 But it isn't enough just to be able to see things. 115 00:10:04,687 --> 00:10:06,648 We want to be able to talk about them. 116 00:10:06,773 --> 00:10:09,275 We want to be able to describe them exactly so 117 00:10:09,400 --> 00:10:11,861 that we can control them and deal with them. 118 00:10:11,986 --> 00:10:15,365 I mean, supposing this were the outline of a piece of territory on a map, 119 00:10:15,490 --> 00:10:19,577 then you might want to tell someone an exact spot to which he should go. 120 00:10:19,702 --> 00:10:23,039 And then you would have to be far more precise about it than you 121 00:10:23,164 --> 00:10:26,709 can be when you just get the general idea of it by looking at it. 122 00:10:28,002 --> 00:10:32,382 And so we introduce then the idea of Maya by 123 00:10:32,507 --> 00:10:35,134 essentially doing this. 124 00:10:37,720 --> 00:10:40,890 This might be called a matrix. 125 00:10:41,015 --> 00:10:48,022 A line crossed, lines crossed by lines, in a very formal, simple pattern. 126 00:10:50,066 --> 00:10:53,403 And the moment we do that, it becomes very easy indeed to talk about this 127 00:10:53,528 --> 00:10:57,073 wiggly line, because we could, for example, number all these squares across 128 00:11:00,827 --> 00:11:03,162 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and so on. 129 00:11:03,288 --> 00:11:06,291 We can also number them downwards. 130 00:11:06,416 --> 00:11:09,627 And then in terms of numbers across and numbers down, we can 131 00:11:09,752 --> 00:11:13,423 indicate the exact points on this grid which cross the wiggly line. 132 00:11:21,848 --> 00:11:25,184 And by numbering those points one after another, we can 133 00:11:25,310 --> 00:11:28,855 give an accurate description of the way that line moves. 134 00:11:31,065 --> 00:11:35,069 And furthermore, supposing the line under our grid were not still like this one, but supposing it was wiggling in motion, supposing 135 00:11:35,194 --> 00:11:39,073 it was a flea or something dipped in ink who was crawling across the paper, and we wanted to know where he was going to go. 136 00:11:44,203 --> 00:11:47,540 All we would have to do would be to plot out the positions which 137 00:11:47,665 --> 00:11:51,210 he has covered, and then we could calculate statistically a trend. 138 00:11:56,257 --> 00:11:59,302 Which would indicate where he would be likely to go next. 139 00:11:59,427 --> 00:12:02,722 And if he went there next, we should say, by Jove, isn't that incredible? 140 00:12:02,847 --> 00:12:09,354 This little flea crawling across the paper is obeying the laws of statistics. 141 00:12:09,479 --> 00:12:11,648 Well, as a matter of fact, he isn't. 142 00:12:11,773 --> 00:12:15,193 What he is doing is... Or rather, I should say, not what he is doing, 143 00:12:15,318 --> 00:12:18,780 but what we are doing, is we are making a very, very abstract model 144 00:12:24,744 --> 00:12:32,210 of the way in which that line is shaped or in which that flea is crawling. 145 00:12:32,335 --> 00:12:34,754 We are breaking it up into little bits, 146 00:12:34,879 --> 00:12:37,924 whereas in fact it is not a lot of little bits. 147 00:12:38,049 --> 00:12:40,551 It is a continuous sweep. 148 00:12:40,677 --> 00:12:43,972 But by treating it in this way, as if it were broken 149 00:12:44,097 --> 00:12:47,684 up into bits, we are measuring it, we are making a Maya 150 00:12:48,977 --> 00:12:52,230 And these cross lines are a Maya just in the same way as the 151 00:12:52,355 --> 00:12:55,942 idea of the lion, the Leo constellation in the stars is a Maya. 152 00:12:57,694 --> 00:12:59,696 A way of projecting. 153 00:12:59,821 --> 00:13:03,199 You see, this thing, it comes out of our minds and we project it upon nature like 154 00:13:03,324 --> 00:13:06,828 this and break nature into bits so that it can be easily talked about and handled. 155 00:13:16,129 --> 00:13:17,672 But you see, this 156 00:13:17,797 --> 00:13:21,217 tends to give us the impression that our world is a lot of 157 00:13:21,342 --> 00:13:24,804 bits and that things are really separate from each other. 158 00:13:28,224 --> 00:13:34,063 You see, how could I demonstrate how this is? 159 00:13:34,188 --> 00:13:34,689 I have an idea. 160 00:13:34,814 --> 00:13:38,026 Mr. Cameraman, will you focus the camera on one 161 00:13:38,151 --> 00:13:41,821 small tiny spot in the set and come very close to it 162 00:13:46,034 --> 00:13:50,830 and travel along bit by bit by bit by bit. 163 00:13:53,082 --> 00:13:56,753 Now you see, this is looking at the world little bit by little bit as if we were only using the 164 00:13:56,878 --> 00:14:00,673 central vision of our eyes, the kind of vision we use for reading and close work of that kind. 165 00:14:07,722 --> 00:14:10,725 But if this were the only way we had of looking at 166 00:14:10,850 --> 00:14:14,062 things, it would be very difficult to make any sense 167 00:14:14,187 --> 00:14:16,647 of life at all, because we would see 168 00:14:16,773 --> 00:14:20,026 everything in series, bit after bit after bit. 169 00:14:20,151 --> 00:14:23,529 But fortunately, we are also able to enlarge the whole 170 00:14:23,654 --> 00:14:27,158 view and take in everything at once in a single sweep. 171 00:14:30,453 --> 00:14:33,790 And you see, this shows all the advantages and the disadvantages 172 00:14:33,915 --> 00:14:37,460 of looking at things in the way that Indian philosophy calls maya. 173 00:14:43,257 --> 00:14:46,803 Because if maya were the only way we had for looking at things, 174 00:14:46,928 --> 00:14:50,264 we should only be able to understand one thing at a time. 175 00:14:52,809 --> 00:14:57,021 And our world is not just one thing happening one after another, one at a time. 176 00:14:57,146 --> 00:15:00,608 Our world is an enormous volume, a great vastness, in 177 00:15:00,733 --> 00:15:04,153 which everything is happening all together at once. 178 00:15:07,573 --> 00:15:13,162 Now, being able to think of things one at a time is extraordinarily useful. 179 00:15:13,287 --> 00:15:16,833 Because this is what enables us to have science, to have scientific control of nature, to be 180 00:15:16,958 --> 00:15:20,586 able to count things, measure them, manage them, and predict their behavior in the future. 181 00:15:27,677 --> 00:15:30,972 But it is inclined to run away with us and give us the impression, if 182 00:15:31,097 --> 00:15:34,684 we think too hard about things, or if we put too much faith in thinking, 183 00:15:40,273 --> 00:15:43,484 that the world is made up of a lot of separate bits so that we have a kind of 184 00:15:43,609 --> 00:15:47,238 bit-by-bit approach to nature, what I might call a putt-putt-putt-putt view of life. 185 00:15:50,783 --> 00:15:56,372 It's useful, indeed, to break things down into things and to classify. 186 00:15:56,497 --> 00:16:00,042 But the moment it gives us the impression that these little bits into which we have divided 187 00:16:00,168 --> 00:16:03,588 the world are really, and in nature, separate from each other, we get into confusion. 188 00:16:07,675 --> 00:16:10,303 Now how do we know that 189 00:16:10,428 --> 00:16:14,056 divided things aren't really separate. 190 00:16:14,182 --> 00:16:15,349 Look, for example, at me. 191 00:16:15,474 --> 00:16:17,059 How do you know I'm here? 192 00:16:17,185 --> 00:16:20,104 How can you make out the outlines of my body? 193 00:16:20,229 --> 00:16:23,816 Isn't it because there is a contrast between 194 00:16:23,941 --> 00:16:27,236 the background behind me and my figure? 195 00:16:28,905 --> 00:16:33,743 You know where the background ends and I begin, and so you are able to see me. 196 00:16:33,868 --> 00:16:40,333 But now what would happen if the background should vanish and disappear and 197 00:16:40,458 --> 00:16:46,214 I would no longer be there, but the figure in the ground instead would be my button. 198 00:16:46,339 --> 00:16:51,594 In order to see me, you have to see a background along with me. 199 00:16:51,719 --> 00:16:58,726 And so, if we go back and look again at the whole thing, then we can see once again. 200 00:17:02,855 --> 00:17:05,733 Now what does that tell us? 201 00:17:05,858 --> 00:17:10,279 Surely, the thing that it tells us is not merely 202 00:17:10,404 --> 00:17:17,411 that the background is one thing and the figure is another. 203 00:17:19,580 --> 00:17:23,125 Since the two must go together, it indicates 204 00:17:23,251 --> 00:17:26,587 that there is a connection between them. 205 00:17:29,340 --> 00:17:32,635 If you can't have the perception of a figure without a background, if you 206 00:17:32,760 --> 00:17:36,305 simply cannot see it if there is no background there, doesn't that mean that 207 00:17:40,810 --> 00:17:44,230 The background and the figure are some way inseparable. 208 00:17:44,355 --> 00:17:48,192 They're different, yes, but they're inseparable differences. 209 00:17:48,317 --> 00:17:50,403 Take, for example, a coin. 210 00:17:50,528 --> 00:17:57,702 When you have a coin, it has two sides, heads and tails. 211 00:17:57,827 --> 00:18:00,413 And these two sides are indeed different. 212 00:18:00,538 --> 00:18:03,374 You might say they are separate sides. 213 00:18:03,499 --> 00:18:06,460 But what would happen if we take a file and start 214 00:18:06,585 --> 00:18:09,297 rubbing away to get rid of one of the sides? 215 00:18:09,422 --> 00:18:12,800 Well, we would rub and rub and rub, and when we finally got rid of the side, the 216 00:18:12,925 --> 00:18:16,429 other side would have vanished too, because the two sides of a coin go together. 217 00:18:18,764 --> 00:18:23,602 Yes, they are different, but they are also inseparable. 218 00:18:23,728 --> 00:18:27,064 And this is true of almost everything in the world, 219 00:18:27,189 --> 00:18:30,735 because we distinguish things from their background. 220 00:18:33,779 --> 00:18:37,825 We distinguish one side from another as we distinguish up from down. 221 00:18:37,950 --> 00:18:41,370 Now imagine what would happen if we arranged everything in the set, or tried 222 00:18:41,495 --> 00:18:45,708 to arrange everything, so that nothing were down, everything had to be up. 223 00:18:45,833 --> 00:18:52,548 If we could really, in nature, separate the up from the down, why we couldn't do it? 224 00:18:52,673 --> 00:18:55,968 Because up goes with down, is unintelligible apart from down, in the 225 00:18:56,093 --> 00:18:59,680 same way that the head side of a coin goes together with the tail side. 226 00:19:05,019 --> 00:19:07,146 And so, in this way, 227 00:19:07,271 --> 00:19:10,941 We, as individuals, as separate beings, are really inseparable 228 00:19:11,067 --> 00:19:14,278 from the whole natural environment in which we live. 229 00:19:17,907 --> 00:19:20,368 We go together. 230 00:19:20,493 --> 00:19:23,746 And you cannot have the one without the other. 231 00:19:23,871 --> 00:19:26,791 Without what we call things, there would be no world. 232 00:19:26,916 --> 00:19:32,004 But without what we would call the whole world, there would be no things. 233 00:19:32,129 --> 00:19:35,674 And this is not only true of 234 00:19:35,800 --> 00:19:38,052 what we call things and objects. 235 00:19:38,177 --> 00:19:40,721 It's also true of many of our experiences. 236 00:19:40,846 --> 00:19:43,974 Let's take, for example, one of the most fundamental 237 00:19:44,100 --> 00:19:48,062 distinctions in experience, what is pleasant and what is not. 238 00:19:48,187 --> 00:19:51,607 Now, a great many people are bending the whole effort 239 00:19:51,732 --> 00:19:55,194 of their lives to have pleasure and get rid of pain. 240 00:20:00,116 --> 00:20:04,370 This pursuit of pleasure is regarded as 241 00:20:04,495 --> 00:20:09,625 the fundamental aim of human existence. 242 00:20:09,750 --> 00:20:13,337 And you know when you start to read old books on Indian philosophy, Chinese philosophy, they 243 00:20:13,462 --> 00:20:17,299 very often say that the first thing a man must understand is to give up the pursuit of pleasure. 244 00:20:24,306 --> 00:20:27,685 And people who read these things think that these are very 245 00:20:27,810 --> 00:20:31,272 gripey Puritans, people who have a sour attitude to life, 246 00:20:33,315 --> 00:20:36,569 who burnt their fingers in the game of the pursuit of pleasure 247 00:20:36,694 --> 00:20:39,655 and say, well, let's not get mixed up with that anymore. 248 00:20:39,780 --> 00:20:47,163 But as a matter of fact, this is a, just a plain, clear, sensible statement. 249 00:20:47,288 --> 00:20:53,294 It's like saying, you cannot have up without down. 250 00:20:53,419 --> 00:20:57,047 You cannot have a figure without a background. 251 00:20:57,173 --> 00:21:01,802 And in the same way exactly, you cannot experience pleasure 252 00:21:01,927 --> 00:21:06,223 unless there is something with which you can contrast it. 253 00:21:06,348 --> 00:21:09,518 You know what happens when a person who's longed to make 254 00:21:09,643 --> 00:21:12,688 a great deal of money all his life, and he makes it. 255 00:21:12,813 --> 00:21:14,773 Finally, he gets a million dollars. 256 00:21:14,899 --> 00:21:16,734 He thinks this is the answer. 257 00:21:16,859 --> 00:21:20,070 Well, it's fine, just in the moment of transition, 258 00:21:20,196 --> 00:21:23,032 while he is going from poverty to richness. 259 00:21:23,157 --> 00:21:29,079 But when he's had his million dollars for a few months, everything adjusts itself. 260 00:21:29,205 --> 00:21:33,000 And he begins to feel just the same as he always felt before. 261 00:21:33,125 --> 00:21:36,837 Conversely, if some of you have lived near a tannery, or near a public utility place like a gas 262 00:21:36,962 --> 00:21:40,883 producing factory, you get so used to the bad smell in the background that you cease to notice it. 263 00:21:46,805 --> 00:21:48,807 It becomes the normal smell. 264 00:21:48,933 --> 00:21:51,268 And so you don't notice it anymore as a bad smell. 265 00:21:51,393 --> 00:21:56,565 For both the bad and the good need each other as contrasts. 266 00:21:56,690 --> 00:21:58,275 And therefore, 267 00:22:01,612 --> 00:22:04,990 When we try to get rid of one of the pairs and possess the 268 00:22:05,115 --> 00:22:08,619 other only, we do something that is profoundly nonsensical. 269 00:22:19,505 --> 00:22:26,554 We think we can do it, because in maya, that is to say, in conventional thinking, 270 00:22:26,679 --> 00:22:30,474 in terms of that kind of measurement that we call thought we can separate the one from the other we can talk about up as different from down we can talk about one thing as different from other 271 00:22:30,599 --> 00:22:34,687 things but in actual experience it can't be done just as in actual experience that wiggly line was a continuous line and not a series of points and in another way too we can't really pursue pleasure 272 00:22:56,792 --> 00:23:03,757 because pleasure is something that has to come to us. 273 00:23:06,260 --> 00:23:09,680 For example, you can pursue a cow and you can go out 274 00:23:09,805 --> 00:23:13,267 and catch it and kill it and serve it up as steak. 275 00:23:17,104 --> 00:23:19,690 That you can do. 276 00:23:19,815 --> 00:23:25,654 But you can't pursue the pleasure that you get from eating steak. 277 00:23:25,779 --> 00:23:29,658 If in other words you try to get pleasure out of steak, supposing I sit here and I have a great big splendid steak served to me, and I say this is the best steak I ever ate, why it's a Chateaubriand, and it cost 278 00:23:29,783 --> 00:23:33,787 twelve dollars a plate, and therefore I must make the very maximum effort to enjoy it, and I cut the thing up, and I put it in my mouth, and say now, I've really got to get the most out of this piece of steak. 279 00:23:46,634 --> 00:23:50,012 And so I chew it with all my might to get the very best out of it. 280 00:23:50,137 --> 00:23:50,971 And what happens? 281 00:23:51,096 --> 00:23:54,642 I'm making so much muscular strain, I'm trying so hard to get something 282 00:23:54,767 --> 00:23:58,103 out of it that I frustrate the very pleasure that it should give. 283 00:24:02,816 --> 00:24:04,568 Why is that? 284 00:24:04,693 --> 00:24:07,780 Surely it is because pleasure is a function of 285 00:24:07,905 --> 00:24:11,659 nerves, and you can't make an effort with your nerves. 286 00:24:13,702 --> 00:24:17,081 Catching a cow is a function of muscles, and 287 00:24:17,206 --> 00:24:20,417 you can make an effort with your muscles. 288 00:24:20,542 --> 00:24:22,836 To give another illustration of the same thing, 289 00:24:22,961 --> 00:24:25,714 supposing I want to see an object in the far distance. 290 00:24:25,839 --> 00:24:28,592 I want to make out the time on a distant clock. 291 00:24:28,717 --> 00:24:31,679 Now my eyes are nervous rather than muscular. 292 00:24:31,804 --> 00:24:34,890 And if I strain my eyes very hard to make out what is 293 00:24:35,015 --> 00:24:38,018 way off on the clock in the distance, what happens? 294 00:24:38,143 --> 00:24:42,606 All the images of the figures on the clock go fuzzy. 295 00:24:42,731 --> 00:24:48,696 But if I relax my eyes and let the image 296 00:24:48,821 --> 00:24:55,828 come to it, as light does in fact come to the eyes, then I can see the image clearly. 297 00:24:59,498 --> 00:25:02,918 So, when we think of the world as consisting primarily of a lot of disconnected 298 00:25:03,043 --> 00:25:06,463 things, and ourselves as one of them, so that we go out and get those things, 299 00:25:16,807 --> 00:25:21,103 or we can push those things around to suit ourselves. 300 00:25:21,228 --> 00:25:24,314 We forget so easily that the entire system of nature, 301 00:25:24,440 --> 00:25:28,235 ourselves included, is interconnected in every conceivable way. 302 00:25:32,948 --> 00:25:35,576 You know what happens when you think, well, we've got a lot of 303 00:25:35,701 --> 00:25:38,829 mosquitoes around here, all kinds of insects that bite us and bother us. 304 00:25:38,954 --> 00:25:39,872 Let's get rid of them. 305 00:25:39,997 --> 00:25:43,083 So we bring in the DDT and we send an airplane over 306 00:25:43,208 --> 00:25:46,336 and spray the whole surrounding territory with DDT. 307 00:25:46,462 --> 00:25:48,255 And what happens? 308 00:25:48,380 --> 00:25:51,800 Suddenly we find that other insects or other pests, which those 309 00:25:51,925 --> 00:25:55,387 insects we destroyed were feeding upon, multiply and increase. 310 00:25:58,891 --> 00:26:01,477 And we have a new problem. 311 00:26:01,602 --> 00:26:02,644 We have to get rid of those. 312 00:26:02,770 --> 00:26:04,938 It's like when they brought rabbits into Australia because 313 00:26:05,063 --> 00:26:07,399 they thought they'd be useful there for some reason or other. 314 00:26:07,524 --> 00:26:10,277 The rabbits multiplied because there was nothing that fed on rabbits. 315 00:26:10,402 --> 00:26:12,821 Then they had a plague of rabbits. 316 00:26:12,946 --> 00:26:16,742 You see, you cannot just push nature around. 317 00:26:16,867 --> 00:26:20,412 You cannot regard it as something to be attacked so that you can grab bits from it and shove 318 00:26:20,537 --> 00:26:24,124 it around any old way as if it were a machine that you could bang around like a mechanic. 319 00:26:28,212 --> 00:26:36,053 Indeed, even machines, as any good mechanic knows, are not that simple to play with. 320 00:26:36,178 --> 00:26:39,556 But if we do not see that our view of the separateness of the world 321 00:26:39,681 --> 00:26:43,185 is based on a convention of thinking, it exists as it were in here, 322 00:26:47,022 --> 00:26:52,236 It doesn't exist out here in actual concrete reality. 323 00:26:52,361 --> 00:26:55,656 And if we are confused, then we jump to follow our 324 00:26:55,781 --> 00:26:59,368 thoughts instead of our senses, and this is no sense. 324 00:27:00,305 --> 00:28:00,591 Support us and become VIP member to remove all ads from www.OpenSubtitles.org