by Eric Baret
It is like the little child who gets thirty presents for Christmas and who says: “I didn't get anything.” It’s the same thing: a lack of clear vision. And this lack of clear vision is the doorway. Thus, it isn't something to get rid of. Fear and emotion will help me find clarity. The lack of clear vision is clear vision. When I become aware of my lack of clear vision, this non-vision is vision. You can't see light, you can only see darkness. And when you see it, it disappears. When you shine light on darkness, there is no more darkness.
You can't ever see light. That is why Islam doesn't depict the Ultimate and why the direct approach is called the negative way.
The act of seeing my limits opens to the limitless. When I become aware of the arrogance which lives in me, this realization is humility itself. The pretense of humility is only arrogance.
I can only see my arrogance. That vision absorbs what is seen. Arrogance is my doorway to a humility where there is no one to be humble.
We can't own anything, become anything, be anything. Only a poet could speak of this.
We don't own these words. The poem invents the poet, not the other way around.
The poem dreams the poet.
Chapter 7
Tomorrow doesn't exist
He is that which appears in the concealment itself and that which is concealed in every appearance.
People of the heart have even said that the inability to know Him is the pinnacle of knowledge...
Words fail, the speaker is mute and the audience deaf.
Ruhollah Khomeini: Mishah
Can you speak of death, of its meaning, of the way it can be approached?
There is no choice. You live exactly how you die and you die how you live. If you live in fear, you die in fear; if you live openly and are available, you will die open and available.
Forget about death and give yourself fully to life. When you are lucky enough to experience fear, be thankful. For if you truly taste it now, you won't have to endure it later, on your deathbed. Let it speak to you somatically. See that you are not afraid, but rather that you sense your fear. Little by little, it will empty itself. But if you try to minimize fear through some technique, you will reinforce it a little more each time—and it will catch up with you at the time of death.
Live openly and be available. Death becomes a non-event and you no longer think about it. No knowledge of it is necessary.
Avoid reading The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Do not postpone life by preparing for death. You do not need priests or esoteric knowledge or any such fantasy if you can help it.
Let your expectations, your anxiety, your worries die in yourself; that is the real death. If such a death becomes embodied in you, you will notice that you no longer think about the death of the body.
For many of us, as death approaches, the brain deteriorates. All the knowledge that you will have accumulated, what you will have read, techniques and romantic ideas that you will have entertained will no longer be accessible. Thus, any preparation is useless.
There is nothing to know. Availability and openness to the moment are your sole companions.
All the reflections that you may have had on the subject of death are only a memory, a ragbag of information you collected on TV or when sitting with dying friends. It is on this heap of erroneous notions that you base your idea of death.
Forget the great master, the lama, all those who would want to assist you. All alone, on the sidewalk or on a hospital bed, die in peace. No priests, no assistance or weeping family, and no need to be surrounded. Die simply, as you have lived: free.
If your loved ones are devastated at your death bed, you must accept that too. If his bad karma pushes a Tibetan lama to want to help you, or if a Catholic priest insists on giving you his blessing, let them do as they need to for their psychological survival. Their ritualized agitation allows them to postpone their own fears, but these psychopathic actions have nothing to do with you.
Nothing can help you—that is the wonder—for nothing is necessary! It is just like at night; the body dies into sleep, thinking vanishes, perception disappears.
Those around you who are happy to see you go should stay and those who are sad should be banned, for to be afflicted by someone’s death is a lack of respect, a lack of love. Your true friends will rejoice when they learn about your death. Not everyone can hear this!
Yoga is the art of dying. By working with your body, you learn to die. I am not only talking on a symbolic level, but practically too. You learn to die, you learn to live, it is the same thing.
If I understand correctly, it isn't necessary to be conscious at the time of death?
Can you choose whether you will be hit over the head with a baseball bat, have a car accident, or have to take drugs to lessen unbearable pain—all of which would inevitably decrease your level of conscious sensitivity?
There is no choice. You don't prepare for life, you simply live it. You don't have to know anything about yourself or what you will have to face tomorrow. You will know soon enough. Why be interested in what happens tomorrow? The present moment is too rich. When you completely give yourself to sensitivity, tomorrow doesn't exist. The present life is too beautiful, too intense, too full to be able to mix in a tomorrow, a future, a preparation. You don’t anticipate anything. The only true preparation is availability.
An ideal death only exists in novels. To die cross-legged, erect, aware… I am not saying it never happens, of course, and it is wonderful when it does. But it is our storytelling that judges, comments, and says, “It was a beautiful death,” or “It was a terrible death.” In truth what do we know? What do we know of the person who dies in pain, in torture, screaming in agony? How do we know that in the moments after her body has gone, she won’t find everything she wanted? And what do we know of the one who dies calmly, who goes off in a dreamlike state, thinking himself a Buddhist? Is he really going to meet all those entities that will help him improve himself in his next life, then a little bit more in the next one, and in every life a little more, until, after 950 lives, he finally becomes a Bodhisattva? All this phantasmagoria comes from the fear of dying. How can we pretend to know what is best? What is right is what happens.
Conscious death is very beautiful. Martial arts practitioners are familiar with Tesshu Yamoaka, a great nineteenth century kendo master who died sitting, fan in hand. Tanaka Seiji, his disciple, made a lithograph of it, which is published in some books on martial arts. A few moments before his death, he summoned his students and asked them: “Why is your training less noisy, why do I hear less yelling?” His students answered that it was out of respect for his last moments. He scolded them and explained that if they really wanted to show respect, they needed to fight harder and tougher. Then, after having given this last bit of advice and upon hearing the shouting of the attacks, he drew his last breath. Some people die this way, it is a wonderful symbol, but it isn't something to try to achieve.
If life allows you to die in peace, it is very well; but if you die in violence, you need to face it. You aren't going to stop fighting and say: “Now I am going to die in peace!” No, you fight until your last breath. To die fighting or to die sitting makes no difference.
On another level, when you become available to your fears, to your anxieties, you prepare for death. You prepare to say yes, to accept. But don't do it for that reason, do it for the sheer joy of it.
What about this attachment to the other, to life, to the body, to being somebody, or nothing?
There is nothing to try for, life is happening inside of you.
For a time, you need to feel young, beautiful, strong, intelligent, wealthy, educated, spiritual, Buddhist or whatever. The same way that you needed, at some point, to belong to a football team, to collect stamps, to shine in school, to have this or that friend. One day you will no longer identify with a football player, you will no longer perceive yourself as a member of this or that group. In time, you will notice that all identifications, all demands fad
e away.
What made you so happy at one point leaves you indifferent later. But don't anticipate this shift. As long as you're happy to own a red car, a blonde woman, a healthy body, a future, a past, a race, a country, you need to live that. One day these things will no longer mean anything to you.
Above all, do not try to be nothing or it will become a concept like any other. Do not become one of those infamous enlightened beings from California or elsewhere who are so deeply blinded that they believe they live in clarity.
To be nothing is not a quality, it is a noticing. A bit like my friend Virgil used to say: “I cannot pretend to be somebody.” The pretense is to be somebody. Thus, it is not about deciding to be nothing. One day, you will stop taking yourself for Napoleon, you will no longer need to feel you exist in order to live. It will come to you naturally. Above all do not adopt another idea such as: “I am nothing!” That would be a new fantasy.
Can you speak more about renouncing? This week is suicide prevention week and I wonder when I hear you say—or when I understand: “We need to go to war and not give up.” In the end, however, when we accept death, we give up. If I no longer want to live, I renounce life.
We need to accept that too. If someone can no longer deal with life, he doesn't have a choice in the matter. Some people simply do not have the capacity to face life. You can't keep somebody alive at all cost. That is therapeutic harassment. If a suicidal person is open to your support, obviously you help them. But suicide isn't a failure of healing. We do what we can. Some people need to have a complex life experience.
Suicide prevention week is a perfect symbol of the hypocrisy of our modern society, just like women's week, mothers' week, children's week, dogs' week, week of the handicapped or violence prevention week. These media events are presented as a politically correct philosophy and only help to appease the conscience of a society which, out of greed, refuses to shed light on its internal mechanisms.
Isn't suicide a sort of giving up? When you say: “I don't want to live anymore?”
Being happy to live is no more a choice than the act of renouncing life. A person who can lift 250 pounds isn't superior to one who can't. The one who is not able to accomplish this feat does not give up, he clearly lives his limitations.
Some people no longer have the strength to face life, to face pain. In more or less clearheaded moments, they take the direction of suicide. We can only be present with them. If the person is available, we help them as much as possible. Some people are beyond rescuing, inaccessible to any form of help. We can still ease their pain by carrying them with us, in our hearts. Just because someone committed suicide does not mean that it's over, that we must think of something else, go to the movies. We keep being with them.
There is no need to fight against what is happening. If there is war, we face the war. If necessary, we fight, without any ideological comment. When somebody dies, when someone commits suicide, we do not reject it: we support them.
I know someone who is about to die. A member of his family really wants to take his place, she does not want to live anymore. What can I do?
There is nothing you can do. This person has a fantasy. Be present, love her, listen to her. If you feel the space to say something, to do something, to touch, to help, do it! If not, don't be hard on yourself, this shouldn't keep you from sleeping. You are not in charge of every suicidal person.
You must accept your limits. Everywhere, at every moment, people are dying in terrible conditions. Will they be better off if you suffer? No! If you run into this situation, if life, in its complexity, places you there, you try what you can. Sometimes what you can do isn't enough to stop someone from dying or committing suicide.
If you ask an astrologer to make the chart of a person who committed suicide, he will confirm the inevitable. If it is the chart of someone who died in a car accident he will also confirm that. We do not witness any freedom of choice in these facts. The one who kills himself does not have more choice than the one who gets run over by a truck. It isn't choice on one side and accident on the other. There is neither accident nor choice. What happens is the inevitable. You can't call one situation normal and the other abnormal; everything is normal.
When you don't build a story around the situation, you realize that what happens isn't haphazard. Suicide is not an anomaly, an exceptional event separate from the rest of the universe. People who commit suicide believe that everything will stop, and this may be a misconception. Sometimes people cannot understand that. They commit suicide, and then they must take responsibility.
Facing someone who wants to kill himself, the only thing to do is to be happy—for happiness is contagious. The more someone in your environment is desperate, the more it is your duty to find the space to be available. If somebody’s distress or depression makes you sad, leave the room, otherwise you will poison him even more.
You can only meet somebody else's sadness in a good way if you yourself are happy. If one of your loved ones is dying and you are afflicted, go to their bedside only when you are ready to accept the game of life and death. Then you will truly help them.
Your civic duty, in a deep sense, is to stop contaminating the world with your psychological suffering. That is why yoga is the quintessential civic art. When you practice yoga, you can no longer be unhappy. You make yourself available to sorrow when it comes up. You are not sad, you sense your sadness. It vibrates, it moves, it lives and it dies.
When you talk about accepting the game of life and death, I find this easy in Quebec or other industrialized countries, even if a tremendous number of people suffer there too. However, I am surprised that you say there are no accidents, when so many people live in poverty or in pain. Are you saying that there is no meaning to all of that?
There is the meaning you give it. That's the only one possible. The way you think depends on your memory, on your culture. Depending on whether you are a Marxist-Leninist, a Trotskyist, a Maoist, a capitalist, a psychoanalyst, a Yogi, a Muslim or a Hindu, the meaning of the world is completely different. So, what is the real meaning? Is it the viewpoint of the Trotskyist, the analyst or the Islamist? These are all projections. When you realize that every opinion which you proffer comes from your culture, you no longer attempt to find a reason.
You can only understand the world through the meaning you give it. For a frog, the world has frog meaning; for someone who suffers, the world is suffering; for a happy person, it is joy. The shark understands the world from the point of view of a shark; orcas have a very different opinion; so do rats, Muslims, atheists, sad people, happy people, wealthy people, poor people or young people. Any identification to a given category gives us its specific vision. Ask a ten-year-old child, a twenty-year-old, an eighty-year-old, a homeless person or a wealthy CEO what the meaning of life is. You will notice that the answer is always different. What are they all talking about? They're talking about their own perception.
This discovery sets us free from the need to project our narrow vision onto something which is boundless.
Life has no abstract significance. Something else is present, a non-conceptual current. The explanation that you can find changes with age. When you tell a small child a fairytale, he understands. When he is fifteen, he has read Freud or Jung and has a different viewpoint. At forty, another still. At fifty-five, he has a deep sense of intuition and understands what a symbol can be. Finally, when he reaches seventy other intuitions come to him and his interpretation is more subtle. So, which is the true understanding? None of them, for there is no such thing. Each level of development entails more and more refined perceptions, but all of them are relative.
If you think that there isn't enough suffering in Quebec, then go to an emergency room or a hospice on a Sunday night and you will find that human distress is exactly the same whether you are here, in Zaire or in Chechnya.
The need to know comes from fear, fear of being nothing.
Why? We ask the question all the time, looking for e
xplanations that could reassure us. There is no why. Why seasons, why the moon? Why was I born? Why do we die? Why is this one in pain and not that one? Asking these questions as a child is legitimate. But one day the sense of awe burns all the questions away.
When you are entranced by a falling leaf, there is no longer room for questioning. You feel the leaf fall inside of you—why is no longer possible. The thought why can no longer take off. Conceptual energy can no longer reach the brain. There is availability, felt sense, clarity. It isn't a clarity that knows anything, it is an absence of psychological urge.
A leaf falls and you see the beauty of the whole universe in it; at the same time, you feel that nothing is happening. It is the same for every perception… It all takes place in an open field. There is no space for concept, for understanding, for anything at all. True meaning is non-meaning.
So, the reality of life is absolutely out of reach for the mind?
Absolutely. Reasoning can only manipulate information that has been acquired, it cannot be creative. You learn certain things and then, depending on your intelligence, your culture and your emotional state, you infer certain flavors, certain proportions, certain conclusions—and you label it all. You say: “There, I have understood, I am like this, the neighbor is like that, the word is that way.” In six months, you will have a different opinion, and six months later another still. When you realize that, there is no way back.
Every human organism has its limits. Bodily, mentally and intellectually we always have limits. We need to discover that these limits are not limiting, but that they will always be here. My political opinions will always derive from my experience, from the experience of my loved ones, from what I have read, lived, inferred.
Objective thought does not exist. When you realize that, you stop referring to your opinions. You still have some, but you are not attached to them. When somebody expresses an opinion different from yours, you do not get offended. You understand that this person cannot have any other viewpoint than she does. You have yours, she has hers, you feel completely free with that. Affection, love is still there. You do not seek to convince.
