by Eric Baret
You will realize how extraordinary the present moment is, and that there is nothing else. This understanding is going to further widen the crack. You are going to surprise yourself, even have fun sometimes, projecting yourself on this woman, this man, this dog, this car, this spiritual master; building hope in acquiring a technique, dance, music... There is nothing to change. You can get married, have a child, divorce, become a Buddhist, but you are not going to seek existence through these meetings or through these activities. The dynamic will decrease and all the energy used to grab, to become, to find and to be somebody will progressively come back to you. You will experience, more and more often, moments of peace without cause, conscious that nothing makes you peaceful and that nothing makes you joyous. By integrating these moments of causeless joy, a little more each time, you will realize surprisingly that nothing makes you unhappy either. A sort of culture of listening, of presence, is going to develop naturally in you.
It is not in your hands, you cannot decide about it.
Again, you will see a very attractive woman, a beautiful car, a master with a long beard, and you will let yourself be caught in a future. Life is what it is: there are women, masters, dogs, but you will not ask them for anything. Then, if it is Buddhism that inspires you, you will become a true Buddhist: you will study Buddhism for the mere joy of studying, without expecting anything from it. Buddhism cannot do anything for you, but you can give it everything. If it is a woman, you are going to give everything without asking for anything in return. In all that will present itself, you will find that resonance, because joy is in giving, not in receiving. All the activities will look that way. Whatever your fantasy may be, it can happen, but it will happen through something and not in order to receive something. You will become a true Christian, a true Buddhist, a true whatever you want, without the slightest demand. There, you will settle in this place of non-dynamic.
If that is your destiny, perhaps, in a moment of non-expectation, you will meet what is called a master, a place or a text that will further increase this shift. But a master arrives when you are not looking for one, when you're not asking for anything. As long as you are asking for something from a master you will not receive anything. You only receive your own sense of lack. To present yourself in front of a master, you need to have your hands free. It is only at that moment that transmission can happen. The heart can speak.
A master knows no other. He cannot transmit to someone else. As long as you pretend to be another, he cannot do anything for you. It's only when you let go of your pretense to the slightest difference that he can reveal himself as you. In the East, this is what is called transmission.
For a master to be, the disciple must disappear. All the beauties of life become possible in this immediacy.
The master is not necessarily in a form that can be seen by his neighbor. Everything is possible. It isn’t a subject for discussion: it is a direct experience.
“I want to meet a master, I want to follow a tradition, I first want to get married or to be less violent, to meditate more, to stop eating meat, to do yoga etc.” I see myself constantly leaving what is essential—the heart. I do not do anything against it; I witness it. This witnessing is already the echo of peace in me. So, it is enough to become aware of how much the will to do something takes me further away.
You are condemned to this revelation. But as long as you ask for it or look for it, it will escape you. In your non-asking, it will reveal itself as yourself. It isn't something that comes from outside: it is your own heart which wakes up. That, nobody can transmit to you, not even a master.
Many people have met great masters and remain as miserable as before. When you leave yourself, master or not, the essential fulfills itself. You need not look for a master, rather look for yourself. But in fact, in this listening to the moment, you don't even have to look: it looks for you.
In this state of joy, in the moment, how do you take responsibility, for instance for your child's schooling? What does responsibility become in this state?
Love excludes all responsibility, burns all appropriation.
What responsibility? Are you going to prevent your child from getting cancer, from getting run over or, later, from cutting your neighbor's throat? What is your part in the responsibility for the fact that your child is mentally retarded or brilliant, tall or short, brave or a coward? It is a fantasy.
There is only love. You love that which is here. Your child is here. It is not your child, it is a child. In this love, a clarity blossoms. This love without demands allows listening, allows you to hear the needs of the child. You do not project your lacks, your miseries, your failures on the child anymore. You do not seek your accomplishment through him anymore. You don't ask him for anything. In this availability, you will be able to notice if he has an ear for music, fists for boxing or legs for hurdles. For that, you need to listen.
The more you project your feelings of lack, the more you want your child to succeed in what you have failed at. Generally, that doesn't work so well. When you don't have any expectation, when you don't ask him to succeed at your life, you discover a relationship beyond any responsibility, a relationship of love, of friendship. Then, there is no more child. Relationship without separation.
Responsibility is a form of arrogance, of pretense. You are not even responsible for your body; how could you be responsible for someone else's? Can you decide to get cancer or not? Are you responsible for getting run over or not? Have you decided to live or to die?
Responsibility is a fantasy.
Love, yes. Love understands. Love can teach. Through it, you will know whether to homeschool him, to send him to a Steiner school, to a public school or to a Koranic one. The child will tell you, in her way. But if you have the slightest opinion, you create a fake child, you transmit your misery. The more you try to avoid it, the more she will feel it. The child cannot be deceived by what you tell her. She feels. When you listen to her, there is no parent or child anymore. Something else is there.
What I am feeling in this regard is that, indeed, if we keep the oedipal bond alive, this bond becomes a ball and chain which prevents life. We need to be able to break that chain in order to anchor somewhere else, to find new bonds to be able to live our life.
Everything we think is right, in the sense that we do not have any choice. A cockroach sees the world as a cockroach. When we are unhappy, we see the world as unhappy. When we are happy, calm, we see the world as happy, calm. We can't help projecting our emotional state of misery or joy onto the world. We need to become aware of this.
I cannot get rid of my prejudices. I will always feel more in harmony with certain tastes, with certain smells, with certain touch sensations, with certain kinds of concepts which depend on my education, on my culture, on my prejudices. All prejudices are as good as another and there is no need to change them. At some point, I realize that these prejudices do not limit me. I no longer identify with them.
My lifestyle is not my business. I do not need to take after Alexandra David-Neel, to go to India, to become an orthodox priest, a sage or a banker. I do not need to become anything anymore. Life makes me a banker, a prostitute, a sage, an explorer and I accept that. No activity, no expression is superior to any other. It is very important to realize that.
I do not have to change my life. I am married: that is what suits me. I am single: same thing. When my body is in vibrant health, when it is sick, that is what I need. I have a handicapped child: that is also what I need. That is the first respect. Nothing is better. I face what is here. If there is war, we go to war. If there is peace, we live in peace. There is no need to have the slightest opinion about the world.
Lives fully lit or obscure, I begin to understand that, deep down, all lives are the same. Those who live them do not have the slightest freedom to do or not to do, to manifest or not to manifest what seems to be happening to them. When I integrate this obvious fact, a form of relaxation arises. I no longer need to look for m
yself in newspapers, in books, or through people who supposedly succeed or fail. My life, my body, and my psyche are what they are. I am wealthy, I am poor: it isn't my business. I accept my life. The next moment, wealth might become poverty and poverty might turn into wealth. A form of plasticity arises.
When I fully accept the way my life unfolds, what happens to me changes. As long as I fight what takes place, I stay stuck and nothing moves. When I no longer seek to modify my life, a form of clarification, of relaxation, takes place. I begin to be able to see myself. As long as I want to change, I do not see myself, I only see my project. As long as I am fed up with being violent, I only see my hatred for this violence; I see my discomfort with it or my hope of not being violent tomorrow. I am absent to myself... No. When I am violent, I am available to the violence that lives in me, I feel it in my whole body. I do not pretend to be different.
This presence to emotion is the change. It is the magic. It is beyond all possible siddhis.
Vision brings change. There isn’t vision and change: vision is change.
When I integrate that, life becomes easy. I no longer have a personal agenda, and without that projection I can feel the currents of existence, the movements. Instead of seeking what is good for me, what I should do with my life, instead of asking, “What will be better tomorrow?” I come back to now. I look at what arises in my heart in the moment: practice karate, boxing, car racing, be a street sweeper, divorce, get married, become a Muslim, study sexual Taoist yoga... I listen.
I do not listen for what is better for me: I have understood once and for all that what is better for me is what happens, what is inevitable. I listen. In that listening, I discover if I am made for dance, for music, for close combat, for Buddhism, Hinduism, for deepening the Vedantic approach or reading the Upanishads. I become a sounding board for the inevitable... And finally, I become a good husband, a good monk, a good Christian or a good nothing at all.
When I listen, I do not ask for anything from society. On the contrary, I do what I can for the environment, according to my abilities. I fulfill my role with my modest means, according to my capacity. I am no more and no less. I am exactly the way I am.
Life becomes easy. My creativity can express itself and, as soon as I no longer look for myself in anything, my limitations magically become more elastic. Of course, I still remain a musician rather than a potter, a painter rather than a dancer or a celibate rather than a sex criminal, depending on my biology.
Whatever situation life sends me, it is a favorable one. Every situation contributes to me, it is the initiation that I need to receive. Be it disease, misery, wealth, what the neighbor sees as failure or what he calls success, everything becomes my path, what is essential to me, my teaching… That is only possible when I understand that I do not have to copy anyone, that I do not have to study, to become anything.
I come back to myself and there is clarity, absence of need. Naturally, I am going to find the function that is the easiest for me in society. That is the one that matches me. Society needs policemen, bankers, bakers, truck drivers. It is not a choice, it is inevitable. There are no more psychological surprises; everything is a surprise.
The mind cannot understand. Nothing is foreign. What happens to me is what is essential. When I meet somebody, that is the essential. There is no coincidence. When I encounter disease, difficulty, whatever it is: that is my wish, my will.
To want what happens, totally. If I am disturbed by what happens, I realize that I am pretending to know better than God what is right. I am criticizing the divine plan again. I become aware of the extent of my arrogance. I cannot not be arrogant. I witness this arrogance which still lives in me and peace descends. I am humbled by the event. It is an active non-action. That doesn't mean that I become a vegetable. I just stop wanting anything other than what is inevitable.
Accepting does not mean giving up. It is a double-edged sword. If a situation disturbs us, we can say that we accept it, but that does not mean that it must stay. We also need to act.
You cannot accept it. The person, the ego cannot accept. It is no use pretending. You can listen and humbly become aware that a situation disturbs you. First of all, let's not pretend that it does not disturb me. If I cannot stand the situation, it is because it reveals something in me which I cannot stand. I listen to what is so disturbing in myself.
Of course, if somebody attacks you on the street, you will not be able to concentrate on this inquiry at that moment. You do what you have to do and then, back at home, or in the hospital, you set aside the understanding or not understanding that you were attacked: you feel your throat, your belly, your chest. You listen to this world of pulsations, of vibrations which talks to you. There, clarification takes place.
Every situation is unique. For your capacity to fight―or to give up your wallet―to reveal itself, you need to listen. In the beginning, you will only be able to listen after a violent event, you will not have the capacity to do this in real time. Days—or decades—later, you will be open to listen to what happened to you. If, after any crisis situation, you regularly practice listening to life, you will become able to do this sooner and sooner. One day, in the middle of a violent situation, you will have this lucidity which allows for a new way of acting. Going through these series of steps is inevitable.
You do not have the choice to act or not to act. If tomorrow, three people attack you or me on the street corner, we will certainly respond very differently. There is no freedom of behavior. Our response depends on our past, on our abilities... No worries.
Life is action. You cannot not act. Action and non-action are the same thing. Non-action is a philosophical concept, it does not exist. The same goes for stillness, which is a non-scientific concept because the body, the table, space are never still. Stillness is an image, like non-action. Even if you take the punches without moving, you are active.
When you say “accepting,” there is still a choice. For instance, if a person or a situation disturbs me, okay, I accept them in the moment; but that does not mean that I have to put up with them. I have the choice to say yes or no to someone I find unpleasant or who doesn't resonate with me. When you say “acceptance,” is it an acceptance in the moment or one which lasts in time? To find a balance, I must be able to listen to myself, I must choose…
You cannot decide to find a man attractive or repulsive. You cannot decide if the way he talks to you will offend you or make you happy. You cannot decide whether seeing a knife scares you or excites you. You don't have a choice in your reaction. Depending on your past, your emotional life, your psychoanalyst, you will have one or the other. For anybody gifted with a certain level of sensitivity, it is obvious which type of man, or dog, or house you like, which sort of work you will look for and what your father looked like. All of your emotional, cultural, intellectual life is written in you.
I am not trying to take away your choice, but to allow you to become aware of these factors. It has never been said, here, to accept anything, but to listen.
When a stranger approaches you on the street, you do not know if he is your future husband or someone who wants to murder you. How will you know? You are going to listen, to look, to feel, to be present. You will not be deceived by his appearance. Observe his body, listen to his pupils, his hands, the position of his feet, his breathing, his head, how he presents himself, how fast he speaks, the tone of his voice, when his voice falters, becomes free... and you will know if he is your future husband or if you'd better walk faster.
Only by listening can you perceive that. The right action comes from the right listening. At some point, this listening takes place instantaneously. If it is not instantaneous, it means that you still have a bit of fear, a bit of anxiety. You need to listen. That's all.
Listening is the most active thing that can be. The transformation of the world lies in listening. You see a snake, your heart beats faster, you sweat, your hair stands on end. Then, in a moment, you realize that it is a rope
. You don't have to do anything for your heart to slow down, for your sweating to stop, and for your hair to come down.
Vision is action.
You thought that this man wanted to mug you and you discover that he is your future husband. Instantly, fear empties itself. You do not have to remove the fear. To see something clearly is the most total action there can be.
When you realize that you have suffered your whole life due to something imaginary, you don't have to do anything to feel your chest relax and to finally breathe. You always thought that you needed to be loved more or better, and then suddenly you understand that you needed to love, that your only misery was to not love enough. Then you are filled with an immense love; you are freed forever from all psychological trauma, from all need to be loved. You have found life's key, which is to love. Never again will you go begging for love: it is you who will give love. That is your profound being. In one instant, this clarity sets you free from forty years of misery. You don't have to do anything afterwards: everything relaxes on its own. Clarity creates the breath. It opens your lungs, your brain. All the cells of your body start to vibrate, to shout, to sing out of joy, because you have stopped oppressing them with the belief that you must be loved.
Clarity is the ultimate activity, you observe the approach that chooses you.