Gateway To Eastern Philosophy & Religion (November 2011)

From the book Gateway to Eastern Philosophy & Religion, excerpted and reprinted with permission from Good Karma Publishing, and available on www.gkpub.com.

Three Stories: Who Am I?

Those of you who’ve been with me in T’ai Chi Chih have heard me say over and over again, “Your task in this life is to find out who and what you are. You can’t find out what you are until you find out who you are!”

Here are two stories about two different men trying to answer the question “Who am I?” When Rabindranath Tagore, the great poet of India and a great translator (he translated the Kabir poetry I read the first night), asked himself “Who am I?” this is his response: “The first day’s sun asked at the first manifestation of being, ‘Who are you?’ No answer came. Year after year went by. At the last sun of the day, the last question uttered on the western seashore in the silent evening was, ‘Who are you?’ Rabindranath got no answer.” He must have been an unhappy man, a tortured man, albeit a very brilliant one. He didn’t know who he was.

Contrast Rabindranath’s response to the question “Who am I?” with Tako-san’s answer. Tako-san was a very simple man who lived in Japan. He founded a place called Itoen, a small organization called the Conscience of Japan (I’m afraid Japan needs it now), a place you have to be invited back to every night. The sole purpose of Itoen is to give help to others. They go out in the daytime and do various services. Tako-san had been a Zen Buddhist monk. When you hear this quotation, you wonder if he didn’t continue as a Zen Buddhist monk. When he asked “Who am I?” this is his response: “Who am I? With one rice bowl, a thousand homes, alone I roam for countless autumns, being neither empty nor phenomenal, returning to life without pleasure or pain. Warm days and green grass at the river’s bank. Cool breezes sweeping calmly beneath the bridge. Should you ask, by chance, who are you? A bright new moon floating over the water.” See, he knows who he is! “A bright new moon floating over the water.” What a difference. Tako-san is, I think, a happy man.

One time, some T’ai Chi Chih students came with their teacher to see me in Carmel. They’d come quite a long way. We sat in my house overlooking a garden. As always happens, one asked about reincarnation. That’s not a very accurate term. I answered, “I’m not very sure what you mean by reincarnation. Is this what you mean? There is a tree in the yard; leaves are falling from the tree. It is autumn. It is the nature of the tree to shed its leaves in autumn. But they’ll be back in the spring time.” The student immediately piped up, “But they won’t be the same leaves!” My answer was: “Why identify with the leaves; why not identify with the tree?” She was getting into individuality, speaking about herself. We hate to give up our individuality. I actually think that people love their suffering: “Doctor, don’t take away my suffering, what would I have left?”

Mind and Breath, as thought and action, fork out into two branches. But both spring from a single root. That is something for you to think about. Mind and breath spring from a single root. Is there anything more basic than breath? Knowing the Self is being the Self. Self cannot be objectified. You can’t make an object out of yourself.

∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

All of you in T’ai Chi Chih have seen the Tao symbol. A synonym for Tao is T’ai Chi. It is called the Supreme Ultimate, the basis of Chinese cosmology. For those of you who have not taken T’ai Chi Chih, here we have the ineffable, the unspeakable reality, the Tao about which nothing can be said. Lao Tzu said the Tao is always in motion. The Tao breaks up into two energies, Yin energy and Yang energy, both of which existed before there were people or place. The first manifestation is the Yin-Yang energy. From the Yin-Yang energy come heaven, earth and mankind. Mankind is the wedding of the Yang of heaven and the Yin of earth. This is why Japanese flower arrangements (Ikebana) are always three pointed: Heaven, earth and man.

From heaven, earth and man, come the ten thousand things, which means the world of phenomena. Most philosophers and others try to understand life through the analysis of the ten thousand things. But there’s no end to phenomena! That isn’t the way to do it. The way the sage does it, and the T’ai Chi person does it, is to work backwards. From the world of the ten thousand things, we work back to heaven, earth, and man. Then balancing the flow of the Chi, we return to the Yin and Yang. When it is balanced, we are back to the ‘Uncarved Block’. The Uncarved Block is the way things were before anything altered them, before the beginning of the world. In my friend Dr. Ch’ang Chung-yuan’s great book, Creativity and Taoism, he has a drawing of the Uncarved Block. He also has some very lush drawings by Chinese artists with it. But he says about the drawing of the Uncarved Block, “Those who like this will be heard from.” I used it for an X-mas card. Most who view the drawings prefer the very lush sketches of bamboo, but the Uncarved Block is Original Essence.

Chinese cosmology differs vastly from India’s Samkhya with its quest for knowledge through enumeration and classification of the twenty-five characteristics of our world of experience. In contrast, Chinese cosmology says first there is Reality, from that comes Yin and Yang energy, from that comes heaven, earth, and man, and then the ten thousand things, the world of phenomena. Work backward, which is a form of yoga, and you come to the ineffable Reality that is the Uncarved Block.

∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

The Reciprocal Nature of Mind and Prana

… For those of you who are doing T’ai Chi Chih, Seijaku, or are interested in Chinese philosophy, I want to talk about the reciprocal nature of mind and prana. I’m going to use the word prana instead of Chi because it’s written that way. But prana and Chi are the same thing. Wars have been fought over different words used to describe the same thing: God is Allah, no, he’s Jehovah, no, he’s called something else. It’s a difference in language! Does that mean there are three different Gods because there are three different words for it? Just go back to the Crusades and other wars to see the truth of this. People will kill for a difference in a word. It’s beyond me.

The reciprocal character of mind and prana, Chi, means that a certain type of mind or mental activity is invariably accompanied by a prana or Chi of corresponding character, whether transcendental or mundane. For instance, a particular mood, feeling or thought is always accompanied by a prana of corresponding character and rhythm. This is reflected in the phenomenon of breathing. Now that is a very deep statement. A prana of corresponding character and rhythm, which is reflected in the phenomenon of breathing. When you’re angry, you take short breaths, but when you’re concentrating on a problem, your breath becomes very fine and almost passes away. Thus anger produces not only inflamed thought feeling, but also a harsh and accentuated roughness of breathing. On the other hand, when there is calm concentration on an intellectual problem, the thought and breathing exhibit a like calmness. When the concentration is deep, as in an effort to solve a subtle problem, unconsciously the breath is held. When one is in a mood of anger, pride, envy, shame, arrogance, lust and so on, this particular prana or air can be felt immediately within oneself. In deep samadhi, the super conscious state, no thought arises so there is no perceptible breathing. At the initial moment of enlightenment, when normal consciousness is transformed, the prana undergoes a revolutionary change. Accordingly, every mood, thought, and feeling, whether simple, subtle, or complex, is accompanied by a corresponding or reciprocal prana.

If you are sensitive enough to detect the vibrations of the other, you know all about the other person, don’t you? In the advanced state of Dhyana, meditation, the circulation of blood is slowed down almost to cessation. Perceptible breathing also ceases, and the yogi experiences some degree of illumination in a thought free state of mind. Then, not only a state of consciousness occurs, but also a change in the physiological functioning of the body. With enlightenment comes a physiological change in the functioning of the body. That’s why it is said in Buddhism, “When the body is mastered, the mind is mastered.” Master the mind, and the body is mastered.

It’s very interesting that every emotion, every thought, is accompanied by a corresponding Chi or prana. In India, they speak of five pranas. Those of you who are doing T’ai Chi Chih know as you are doing “Pulling In The Energy,” you visualize the five colored pranas coming in through the fingers: red, white, blue, black and yellow or green. Instead, T’ai Chi Chih teachers tell you to visualize the energy from the most distant star coming through the fingertips. Unless you’re going to devote your whole life, your every moment to it, it would be hard to visualize the five pranas coming in.

They talk about the prana that takes things this way, the prana that causes elimination and so forth. The study of prana is a very big one in India. I believe all the Roshi or the sages knew how to use the prana. It is interesting how, very often, when we meet people, we talk about “bad vibes.” Then we talk ourselves out of it. Those bad vibes have to do with the Chi, the prana. Zen Masters can look at your face and not only see what you are and what you’ve been, but also tell if you are failing. Roshi Sazaki told me that Alan Watts was failing. (I don’t want to pick on Alan; he was very brilliant and a nice person.) Roshi said, “He’s giving the impression to young people that he is enlightened, and he’s going downhill very rapidly and won’t last very long.” Then he said to me, “I’d like you to write a book refuting what he has said.” I’m not a debunker! I said, “No thank you.” I wouldn’t do it. I don’t know how old Alan was when he died, 55 or something like that. A Master can look at you and see.

As you do T’ai Chi Chih, you will be able to look at others, and, particularly on the cheeks, you will see pinpoints of red if the Chi is flowing. Or you will see it in the eyes and be able to tell a great deal about the other person. If you look at someone who is drinking too much coffee, or who smokes a lot, you’ll see that not only the Chi isn’t flowing properly, but the cells are not taking in the oxygen they need. It’s very easy to spot someone who is a habitual smoker. It interferes with the flow of the Chi.