"Buddhism is a method-it is not a doctrine. Buddhism is a dialogue, and what it states at the beginning is not necessarily what it would state at the end. The method of Buddhism is, first of all, a relationship between a teacher and a student. The student creates the teacher by raising a problem and going to someone about it. Now, if he chooses wisely, he will find out if there is a buddha around to use as the teacher, and then he says to the buddha, 'My problem is that I suffer, and I want to escape from suffering.' So, the buddha replies, 'Suffering is caused by desire, by trishna, by craving. If you can stop desiring then you will solve your problem. Go away and try to stop desiring.' He then gives him some methods of how to practice meditation and to make his mind calm in order to see if he can stop desiring. The student goes away and practices this. Then he comes back to the teacher and says, 'But I can't stop desiring not to desire. What am I to do about that?' So the teacher says, 'Try, then, to stop desiring not to desire.' Now, you can see where this is going to end up. He might put it in this way: 'All right, if you can't completely stop desiring, do a middle way. That is to say, stop desiring as much as you can stop desiring, and don't desire to stop any more desire than you can stop.' Do you see where that's going to go? He keeps coming back because what the teacher has done in saying 'Stop desiring' is he has given his student what in Zen Buddhism is called a koan. This is a Japanese word that means 'a meditation problem,' or more strictly, the same thing that case means in law, because koans are usually based on anecdotes and incidents of the old masters- cases and precedents. But the function of a koan is a challenge for meditation. Who is it that desires not to desire? Who is it that wants to escape from suffering? Here we get into a methodological difference between Hinduism and Buddhism on the question of 'Who are you?' The Hindu says, 'Your self is called the atman, the self. Now, strive to know the self. Realize I am not my body, because I can be aware of my body. I am not my thoughts, because I can be aware of my thoughts. I am not my feelings for the same reason. I am not my mind, because I can be aware of it. Therefore, I really am other than and above, transcending all these finite aspects of me.' Now, the Buddhist has a critique of that. He says, 'Why do you try to escape from yourself as a body?' The reason is your body falls apart and you want to escape from it. 'Why do you want to dis-identify yourself from your emotions?' The reason is that your emotions are uncomfortable and you want to escape from them. You don't want to have to be afraid. You don't want to have to be in grief or anger, and even love is too much it involves you in suffering, because if you love someone you are a hostage to fortune. So, the Buddha says the reason why you believe you are the atman, the eternal self, which in turn is the brahman, the self of the whole universe, is that you don't want to lose your damn ego. If you can fix your ego and put it in the safe-deposit box of the Lord, you think you've still got yourself, but you haven't really let go. So, the Buddha said there isn't any atman: he taught the doctrine of anatman, or nonself. Your ego is unreal, and as a matter of fact, there is nothing you can cling to-no refuge, really, just let go! There is no salvation, no safety, nothing anywhere, and you see how clever that was. What he was really saying is that any atman you could cling to or think about or believe in wouldn't be the real one. This is the accurate sense of the original documents of the Buddha's teaching. If you carefully go through it, that is what he is saying. He is not saying that there isn't the atman or the brahman, he's saying anyone you could conceive wouldn't be it. Anyone you believed in would be the wrong one, because believing is still clinging. There is no salvation through believing, there is only salvation through knowledge, and even then the highest knowledge is nonknowledge." ~Alan Watts
"In the world, the wiggle isn't bit-ed."
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