I was thinking about a word association in the shower today to fish. My answers were fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish and fish.
Why? I often say things then explain them to myself.
My guess: a tranquil mind, thinking of an object, need only think of that object. What word association does it catch a mind in motion, and attempt to map out the circle it is traversing. And I would add that it MUST be a circle if there is movement but you are still stuck, right?
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Further thought on Baret. There may be many of these. He was thought provoking, so he provoked thought, in me. Or in my space. Or thought Out There, as it seems to exist in me.’
OBVIOUSLY, the theory that you should dispense with theory amounts to a mild or perhaps major hypocrisy. Silence would be the best answer, probably, and Yes to every question a close second, given his non-systemic system.
But he IS French, after all, and they are good at their sort of word play.
Here is the thing, though: it is impossible for me to know how directly he knows what he knows–if we use that word, as I just did–but if you call this sort of talking his dance, his painting, then it is just a natural outgrowth of needing to do something on Earth. Your body does have its own built in need for movement of some sort.
This is a more or less perfect rationalization of his giving talks, or perhaps giving words. Honest compassion for us many idiots is another.
More likely, he is still in the grips of some fear himself. More likely, he still enjoys the slight possession of the role in which he is a dispenser of non-wisdom and non-awakening, along with wisdom and awakening, such that both are extinguished, like anti-matter and matter, in an explosion of invisible energy somewhere we cannot name or describe or think.
This would be the theory, that we can’t call a theory, but which I just did.
You see, there is no violence not possible with words. I will wonder aloud if similar violence is impossible in silence. Less likely, I feel certain.
And I will add that if you understand him, I think, you would never want to attend one of his lectures. It reminds me of the story about Nasruddin, in which he was such a bad teacher on purpose that only the worst students stayed with him.
Here is the thought I will leave you with: Gap is a word which describes something which does not exist. Holes do not exist. Space does not exist. But we have words for them, because they are useful.
All of this teaching, as I understand it, exists in that space between the one thing and the other. It is the moment your foot is in the air, but not yet touching the ground. It is the moment when you feel the inbreathe before you speak and sing. It is the pauses in music. It is the tip of the shadow you see before the person walks around the corner. It is a quiet meadow, before the birds start chirping. It is the first hint of sunlight in the earliest dawn.
It is, in other words, what is unremarkable, and unremarked upon. It is the stillness which does not exist in contrast to motion, but which finds an invisible home there.
OK. That satisfies the pedant in me. That will conclude today’s lecture about why you should not give lectures.