A CHOICELESS, EFFORTLESS WORLD? "Wisdom and Folly Are Meaningless: None is the better" 14 The wise man has eyes in his head, while the fool walks in the darkness; but I came to realize that the same fate overtakes them both. 15 Then I thought in my heart, "The fate of the fool will overtake me also. What then do I gain by being wise?" I said in my heart, "This too is meaningless." Eccl 2: The focal debate in Usually, offering practical methods to attain a goal is pretty straight-forward, you can get advise coming at you left right and centre. But when it comes to generalities of life and the everyday kind of things, like the decisions that we are forced to take in our day to day goings, things are a little bit different. Why? Because with our usual goals we're trying to arrive at a certain result, and all we have to do to get there is to arrange the different elements of the world so that they help us arrive. But with what life presents us, we can get into a special trap. Instead of trying to 'get somewhere', we are already there, we are already living it, we're trying to see and make sense, even decide about something that is right in front of our eyes, that we are already experiencing. Some school of thought argues that the present is so obvious, that all we need do is just experience it; don't overthink it, don't try to pick sides, just experience it without trying to control it. Can all the schooling and all the mystique of religions and life's struggles be pointing toward something so blatantly obvious that we literally have to do nothing in order to perceive it? We simply can't believe that. Life is more difficult than that, and we'll continue to create model after model to make it a struggle for us to live contently and fully. In short, we'll insist on some sort of effort in order to live contently – and that very effort will prevent our living consciously! In general, we spend probably fourteen to sixteen hours each day in constant effort; trying to make lots of money (after all, that's what everyone else is doing, right?), We think we're doing the right thing but all the while we're simply reinforcing a life model which is guaranteed to make us miserable. Even our best-intentioned efforts, such as doing an hour of exercise, or meditation, can easily be self-defeating. So let's try something new. Let's devote a half hour each day to doing absolutely nothing. That's right. Sit down in a room where you can close the door, and just do nothing. No music, no TV, no answering the phone. Don't stare out the window. Just look at a wall. Don't try to meditate. Just sit there and see what happens. The first thing most people will notice is that it's very difficult. That's right! Sitting down for a half hour and doing nothing at all is difficult. Why? That's a good question to ask yourself. If you can devote sixteen hours a day to your usual life efforts, why is it so difficult to do a half hour of nothing? So, Are You the Driver? You see, we like to think of ourselves as the 'drivers' of our lives, but most people, when they begin the half hour challenge, will start to notice that they are actually being driven. The force of habit and the force of fear create a powerful combination, and we'll tend to think that the half hour is actually 'wasted time'. Even if you can physically spend the half hour in the quiet room, what is your mind doing all that time? Are you the driver, or are your thoughts moving off in every direction so that you can barely follow along? We soon discover that there is a lot of mental effort going on without us even knowing it! Is it really right to think that I'm directing my own life, or is it more apt to say that I'm just being pushed along like a stick in a swift-moving stream? We can feel very resistant to these thoughts. We'll insist that we're in control, when in reality we're basically powerless to affect any change in our lives. Our careers, our relationships, our finances, and our wildly careening thought-processes dictate our every move in life. In fact, we really have no evidence that we're in control at all! Life is composed of many simple assumptions. When we hear these assumptions, we know they are true. We know that there was a yesterday, and if the universe doesn't explode, there will be a tomorrow. We know there is a 'me' who was born, is moving through life, and will someday die. We know that there is a thing called time, and that it moves along and we can't escape it. These things are so obvious; they need not even be questioned! Or do they? We are going to explore one of the most basic assumptions we hold dear about life; We Make Our Own Decisions, We are in Control: "Every day you are faced with different decisions, and what you decide affects your life." This statement is one of those Very Basic things that we simply know to be true. Nothing could be more obvious, right? IT'S FREE WILL! Free will assumes that when two decisions are presented before us, we have a choice of which one to choose. Hopefully, we'll choose wisely; especially about such important maters as the national constitution. Now, although we think it's obvious that humans have free will, it's not so obvious that, say, a tree has free will. Imagine for a moment, a tree in the forest. The wind suddenly blows, and the limbs of the tree move in the wind. Imagine that the tree says, "Look! I have free will! I'm moving my limbs right now!" Well, we'd probably laugh a little bit. "You're not moving your limbs," we'd say. "The wind is. You have no choice in the matter." The tree might be ruffled. It waits until the wind stops, and then it says, "Look! I decided to stop moving my limbs!" Again we'd pat the tree sympathetically and tell it that it isn't doing anything at all – its limbs are merely responding to the wind. Now let's pretend that a woman is sitting across from you. She says, "Okay. Why don't you prove to me that you have free will?" "Fine," you reply, and you reach over and pick up a pencil. "I decided to pick up this pencil, and then I did it." She laughs a little bit. "You didn't decide to pick up the pencil. It's just the wind. You're only responding to your environment, just like the tree's limbs responding to the wind." "But that's ridiculous!" you reply. "I decided to pick up the pencil! I could have decided to do anything!" "You can assert that," she insists, "but the fact is that you picked up the pencil, which was a direct response to my challenge. My challenge was the wind, and your action was the movement of the tree's limbs." "Well, now I'm putting the pencil down!" you reply. "You didn't ask me to do that!" "You're still only responding to your environment," she says. "The relationship between the wind and the tree is pretty easy to recognize and predict, because there aren't too many factors. The relationship between you and your environment is more difficult for you to recognize, because your reaction to any situation will be made up of all the things you've learned and all your ideas and biases from your past. We also have to plug in all the numerous factors in each unique situation. But if we could possibly take into account all these factors, you'd be just as predictable as the tree in the wind." Can we prove we have free will? No matter what we do in any given moment, it's perfectly conceivable that we're just reacting to our environment, no different than the tree in the wind. We really have no way to prove that we have free will at all! Watch your actions, and see if you ever do anything that's totally unrelated to your past and present environment. Of course you don't – all your actions are tied up within the complex factors which have brought you to your present moment. This gets more clear when we ask what we mean by 'free will'. Do you have an answer? Imagine programming a robot with human-like artificial intelligence. Your robot is sitting in front of an apple and a pear. You want it to make a choice as to which fruit it will eat. How do you program that decision? Do you make it random? If you do, does the robot really have a 'choice'? Do you give the robot a preference by saying that it will choose the apple 70% of the time, and the pear 30% of the time? What sort of choice is this? It's still just a toss of the dice. How about if we program the robot with the ability to analyze all its past situations and to create preferences, so that it can then make a choice? But still, all we've done is make the equation more complicated! There is still no choice being made – it's simply a matter of what the outcomes of all the various complicated equations add up to. No different than wind blowing a tree. What we want is for the robot to make a decision, independent of any equation. It can't simply compute all the factors of past and present; it just has to sort of make a decision out of . . . NOTHING. Just what is this strange thing that we call free will? Does Njue have free will? Oddly enough, if an apple and a pear are in front of me, there's quite a bit of evidence that I don't have a choice at all. In fact, I can tell you how my 'program' works, precisely as if I am a robot. I'll look at the two fruits, and because I've had past experiences that have led me to like pears better than apples, I'll probably choose the pear. Except if the pear doesn't look very ripe, because I haven't been programmed to enjoy crunchy pears. Now, if I was thinking about free will, I might choose the apple just to prove that I can make my own decision, but all I've really done is react to my environment again. In fact, I can't escape this! If we look honestly at the world that lays out before us, we can't find any evidence at all for free will. We can shout and yell and insist that we have it, but we sound just as ludicrous as the tree, insisting that it's decided to move its limbs when the wind blows. But If there is no free will . . .Suddenly we have a problem. Does this mean we are nothing but mindless robots, unable to make decisions? This, of course, is where our minds will lead us. Remember, one of life's favorite tactics is to jump to the 'opposite' of any idea. So, if we don't have free will, we must have the opposite! We must be mindless drones! This is our minds training, and our mind will jump right to that conclusion. But let's break out of the usual path of thought for a moment and consider some other possibilities. First of all, just because we don't have proof of free will doesn't mean that it doesn't exist! We might also ask if we have proof of no free will. And we won't find any proof of that either! What this means is that we've entered into the realm of Belief. With no proof either way, we're free to believe in either option. So why don't we look at each option and see which one is better? There is free will! Most of us will want to believe in this option. We're used to it, and it's the comfortable option, since we've believed in it all our lives. In fact, we'd probably like to forget about this whole thing and just slip comfortably back into our free will mindset. But wait! Exactly what does free will do for us? After all, you'll notice that the tree's actions, and our actions, are situation-appropriate no matter what we believe. If you don't believe in free will, you're not suddenly going to be a mindless slave who will do anyone's bidding. You'll simply react according to your environment, which ironically is what you'd do whether or not you believe in free will. In fact, if we cease to believe in free will, do we lose anything? I don't believe in free will, and I certainly don't walk around being 'pushed about' by my environment any more than you do. In fact, as you'll see, I ironically might have more influence over my environment by not believing in free will! The dark side of free will; While we don't lose anything by abandoning the belief in free will, we do free ourselves of some things. Consider that people can spend enormous amounts of time trying to decide on this option or that, and when they make a wrong decision, they can get pretty down on themselves. If you mess up a decision, you can feel guilty, stupid, or embarrassed. Basically, believing in free will sets up a system whereby you imagine that life is a series of choices, and you move from choice to choice, hoping you make the right ones. To add to all this work, we get to spend lots of life energy feeling bad about all the 'wrong' decisions we've made. Basically, this whole free-will/decision thing seems like a set-up for making us feel bad! But having no free will is just like being an empty-headed robot; In the case of the woman and the pencil, the simple fact is that before the challenge that made you think of the pencil, it was a NON ISSUE; life moved along perfectly with no thought whatsoever of the pencil, but the instant we were made conscious of the pencil, we tend to think that things change and that we somehow have to make a decision. Do we really? Life was perfect even with the old constitution, until some politicians, for whatsoever reasons that we don't want to get into here started making noise about reforms, now we all feel strongly about one view or the other, and keen to take sides and defend our opinions, but do we really have to? What if we were taught that instead of life being composed of choices, life was composed of situations? And what if you were taught that you will mutually arise perfectly within each situation? What if we cease to imagine there is some mysterious program that allows us to make decisions based on 'nothing'? You are a part of your environment and you 'arise' into each situation in accord with your environment. Just like a tree that 'mutually arises' with the forest. It grows in harmony with the forest, growing in this direction or that to reach more sunlight. It isn't independent of the soil or sunshine or squirrels, but is an integral part of its whole environment. As the forest grows, the tree grows. You too can grow in harmony with your forest. Each moment is a new situation, and you harmoniously 'arise' into each new moment! You don't have to be stressed, because you know that each new moment will bring its own situation, and that you'll arise perfectly within it! Skillful Means "Chasing the wind" 14 I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind. 15 What is twisted cannot be straightened; what is lacking cannot be counted. Eccl: 2 - Since we simply can't comprehend doing nothing about situations, it makes sense for us to begin with some practical exercises. Now, entire religions have been built around such exercises. Let's call these exercises 'skillful means' of pointing us toward an enlightened decision. The problem with these methods is that it is very easy for us to become attached to them, to think that if we just do such-and-such enough hours per day, we'll have all the answers about life. Soon we are chanting sutras, meditating for hours on end, and contemplating the words of great teachers, philosophers or the opinions of others. We become so immersed in the methods that we forget we're not trying to achieve a typical 'goal'. Indeed, living is something that we can't achieve by any amount of effort! So why all the work? One of my favourite ads is that of the Ribena Berry. 'If I concentrate, I can explode". Go ahead, please explode… I guess that we all know by now that as long as we keep trying, we shall never explode, and then when we have just about stopped trying…. KABOOM, then it happens. If you really cease trying (which is totally different than 'giving up' in despair), if you cease craving happiness and peace, you'll Awaken. It's that simple. So all of our efforts are just attempts to get us to cease those very efforts. In effect, the 'goal' of these efforts is to show us, without a doubt, that they don't work. We can't achieve the perfect happiness we long for. We can't ever overcome our most subtle fears and insecurities. When we discover what is meant by 'cease trying', Awakening will happen. But in the meantime, addicted to effort, we might as well just try. We're going to do it anyway (until we stop), so let's make some use of our efforts! The suggestions I'll make here are very basic and simple, because if our methods have fancy-sounding names and a lot of rituals involved, it's much easier for us to become trapped by them and create a 'practice' for ourselves. And 'practices' easily become traps of never-ending effort. Do what needs to be done without over thinking about the results, ARISE PERFECTLY; stop asking What if I mess up? Perfect arising doesn't mean 'correct decision'. To illustrate, let's pretend that I'm driving my car with someone I love in the seat beside me. Suddenly, an oncoming car swerves erratically. Let's say that I believe in decisions, and I decide to swerve to the left, and I get into a collision. I survive, but my loved one is killed. Can you imagine my guilt? If only I had swerved to the right! I can punish myself for the rest of my life for that decision, and many people actually do spend significant portions of their lives feeling terrible about decisions they've made. Now, let's say that I'm perfectly mutually arising to the situation. I swerve to the left, and get into a collision. My loved one is killed. You'll notice that the same thing happened in both instances. But now, knowing that I perfectly mutually arise in each situation, I know that the 'decision' I made is the 'decision' I made. What happened happened, and it's no use to feel bad about it for the rest of my life. 'Bad things' may happen to us no matter what we do, but the filter through which we see those things makes all the difference. Just like your heart beats involuntarily, you are perfectly capable of arising to the situation without any thinking whatsoever.This is the way that everything in nature works – growing and moving 'just right' in accord with its environment. This is the way that people work, too – it's just that we can imagine that we are independent of our environment, imagine that we have a mysterious something called 'free will', and then suffer the consequences. Ceasing to 'make decisions' is easier than you might think. Think about how much energy you spend on decision-making. How much time do you think about the ramifications, the ifs and buts, regarding the various decisions you make each day? Notice how this guessing-game takes up enormous amounts of energy. Lots and lots of energy which leads to rather dubious results. Using the Half Hour Wisely "Toil Is Meaningless"11 Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun……17 So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. Eccl 2: Now is when I let you in on the truth, and tell you that I'm not really trying to convince you that you're being 'driven'. I certainly don't want to prove that free will does or doesn't exist. In fact, am not really concerned with the issue of free will at all! My intent is simply to help us get a perspective on our usual world-view, because as long as we're stuck in the same old assumptions about life, we'll merely follow in the same cycle of creating frustration, stress, and fear. If we live in the illusion that we're in control of our lives, understanding that we're usually on 'auto-pilot' can be a good incentive for us to start paying attention to what's really going on. Let's simply take note of the contrast between our usual state of 'running on autopilot', and the half hour of time spent in relative awareness of thoughts and perceptions. Of course, most people just can't keep up with the half hour. They'll try it for a few days or maybe a week, but then they'll begin to neglect it in order to do more 'important' things, like work; we're completely addicted to filling each moment with busy-ness or distraction. Few others will make the half hour into a daily ritual which becomes nothing more than a momentary escape from our usual, hectic day. If this happens, our half hour only becomes another ego-trap! If truth be told, expecting any other outcome from humans would be impractical, there's really nothing wrong with any of these scenarios, after all even people who fancy themselves rationalists usually live 99% according to beliefs, even as they criticize others for 'blindly believing' in religion or new age philosophies Whether it is meditation, reciting mantras, or reading this blog, the important thing to remember is that if these tools are to be properly used, we must use them and then discard them. They are only pointers, and aren't actually a 'means to an end'. The oddest part is that even though I say 'discard' them, you might end up meditating for your entire life. At some point, however, the meditation will transform from a 'means to an end' into 'just another thing', like washing dishes or drinking a glass of water. Life is incredibly simple – all the complexities of life are created out of believing in things we don't have any evidence for. As each moment arises, we can either confront it through the filter of our decision-making process, and find ourselves in a sticky mess, or we can see each moment in its pure simplicity, and respond to it perfectly. Each moment you will ever encounter is crystal clear and perfectly simple. It is only our minds that project into future and past, and cloud the moment with our thoughts. Encountering the moment is the simplest thing we can do. It's what happens when we stop trying and putting forth effort. And that's the secret, right there: Simple, pure, and effortless. References: Kenton Whitman January 5th, 2007.
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