Tag Archives: Free will

Death

(This is a theme that I wil doubtless revisit often in these ramblings!)

As far back as I can remember, I have been afraid of death. I remember even as a young child feeling rage and sorrow that “all this” would one day simply end. That would be that. I never believed stories of an afterlife.

The teachings of non-duality have altered my feelings towards death, radically and viscerally.

“I” am most certainly a fiction: that is point number one. The carefully constructed personality, built out of experiences and memories, is a fiction, and its seeming death need not be mourned.

Point number two: the present is a “moving shifting mysterious event,” as Darryl might put it. Death, no doubt, will also be a moving shifting mysterious event.

Point number 3: death feels like going home, a return to that boundless space from which all of us seemed to “arise” at birth. Going home feels like a relief. No ego to cart around any more.

We will all be liberated when “we” die. It is cool to be liberated in this lifetime, but it may not be such a big deal, except for the deluded ego, that is.

Breath by breath

In some Buddhist meditation techniques, the practitioner is taught to repeatedly bring attention to the breath in fine, subtle detail. Whenever it is noticed that the mind has wandered far away, the suggestion is to bring the attention back to the breath. The intention is, I think, to refine attention as well as to become aware of the “monkey mind.”

I find it refreshing to pay attention to the breath, but from a slightly different angle. It is fun to see that the breath is simply happening. Similarly, it is fun to notice that the heart is beating, the body is spontaneously moving, thoughts and moods are spontaneously arising without a doer.

Attention to the breath is a powerful gateway into the realisation that “I” am not causing things to happen. Worlds are arising and dissolving without “my” having to do a thing about it.

Straw Dogs

One of my favourite philosophers, John Gray, opens his book Straw Dogs (critiquing liberal humanism) with a quote from the Tao Te Ching:

“Heaven and earth are ruthless, and treat the myriad creatures as straw dogs.”

Nature is not interested in my psychological state, or in my creativity or longevity or philosophical acuity or ambition or “success.” Nature does not care about the human individual at all. It is the survival of the species that matters.

From a non-dual “perspective,” the creative force in the universe is profoundly impersonal. It is not interested in our individual projects. It does not choose between the disease and the victim, between the virtuous and the evil. It is deep impersonal love.

Darwin teaches that species are only assemblies of genes, interacting at random with each other and their shifting environments. Species cannot control their fates. Species do not exist. This applies equally to humans.

John Gray. “Straw Dogs”.

We do not control our fates, either as individuals or as societies or as a species. We are as subject to the laws of nature, and the laws of impersonal love, as the flower, the star, the gorilla, the virus.

Seeing this has the flavour of a unique kind of freedom.

Giving up effort

“As a dreamer it seems convincing that you are an individual who can make an effort to get from A to B. In reality there is no you and no A or B. But going even deeper than that, there is no-one that can make an effort and there is no-one that can give up seeming to make an effort. ”

Tony Parsons. “Nothing Being Everything”.

When I first came across the “message” of non-dualism, it was a rude shock. I had spent a “long time,” “many years,” in trying to pay attention to myself and my surroundings, understand myself better, come to a state of peace and calm, improve my psychological state, have more compassion and … the list is already quite long.

When I read statements like the one above by Tony, then I began to “give up effort.” And this led to my second rude shock. I can’t really either acquire or give up anything. The one to whom acquisition and renunciation is happening is a dreamer.

There is only the flow of life and experience. This is essentially undefinable. Thought and the dreamt thinker may try to make sense of the flow, apply labels to the flow. But do labels really capture reality?

Just as much as striving is of no avail, giving up striving is of no avail either. There is only what is.

The illusion of the illusion of free will

(This is a re-working of an earlier post from my older blog, fullnessemptiness.wordpress.com)

As Sam Harris puts it, the illusion of free will is itself an illusion.

When we observe our thoughts, we see that they float up and pop into our consciousness. We are not creating our thoughts. In fact, we cannot know what our next thought and emotion might be. We do not know what our next intention or desire might be, either. We have not created them any more than we have created thought or emotion.

Direct observation, free and relaxed, reveals this to be true.

This is what the great masters of non-duality were attempting to convey: there is no central controller organising itself and the world. Stuff happens, and “we” place a layer over it and make ourselves the protagonists of our narratives.

A truly liberating insight.