Oh man. This one is such a total laugher that I'm gonna take a break right here and compose
myself a bit before I rip into this one. If you're following the last couple of Chapters, you
can probably guess where I'm gonna go with it.
...
Alright, I've had a chance to compose myself now, so let's begin...
BAAAAAHAHhahahahaa. This might be the best of the 12 Chapters, just because not only is every paragraph bullshit,
every individual line of each paragraph is worthy of the same classification.
Let's begin. (deep breath)
"We live without effort" - See, if the author (me) had just stopped there, put a period on the end of it, and moved on to
Chapter 4, Chapter 3 would have been a lot better. Unfortunately, the sentence goes on, creating the same problems that
were first hinted at in the first Chapter, but now are allowed to flourish, and thus stink up the place. Because the sentence continues,
we know that living without effort is something we're going to have to try to do, by doing whatever comes next in the sentence!
Yes, teacher, keep telling us what we have to do in order to live without effort! We'll try as hard as we can!
And anyway, while
"we live without effort" is closer to it, the fact is that life (another word for "what is", or "the present moment") just is. There
is nothing separate from it, certainly not a "we", that gets to live it. If anything, it lives itself. Without effort.
"...by becoming aware of our direct experience..." - This is a particularly insidious idea, but I will give the author (me) some
slack, because virtually every single "spiritual practice" focuses on this, and thus makes the same godawful mistake. This may
start to sound like a rehash of what I've already said, but it bears repeating (and repeating, and repeating.) Listen:
You cannot become aware of your experience, because that experience -- or "what is" -- is all that there is, and there is nothing
outside of it that can be aware of it. Now, you may not believe this, because you have sat on a meditation cushion and lit some
incense and "became aware of your breath", and then a thought floated into your mind, and you "became aware of that", and
then you remembered your meditation instruction, and "moved your attention back to the breath", and continued to do that until
the finely-crafted Tibetan meditation chime went off. The thing is, none of that happened, not the way it's described there.
A better description would sound more like this: Breathing arose. Thought A arose ("I like muffins!") Thought B arose ("I'm thinking about muffins, and should be focusing on my breath!"). Breathing arose. Wash, rinse repeat. There was only ever what was, only ever what form the present moment took and there was nobody ever there to be aware of any of it. When you think there is, you'll always have problems. Trying to become "aware of your experience" is like trying to find glasses that are already perched on your nose. No matter where you look, you'll
never find it, because it was already everywhere.
"...and opening fully to it." - What did I just say? You can't open fully to it. You may think you're opening fully to it, but all that was happening was something arose, the thought of "me" arose, the thought of "opening to it" arose, and round and round we go. Only ever what is, nobody to open to it.
By this time you can probably guess what my commentary on the rest of this Chapter is going to sound like. It goes something like this: 1. You can't strive against what is. 2. You can't need to change anything (nor can you change anything.) 3. Life always unfolds naturally, regardless
of what you do or don't do about it.
And joy may arise, or it might not. But once you see it's not arising for anyone, it hardly seems to matter.
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