I Observe Purposelessness

I open my eyes, and it’s another day. I lean over and give my dog a big kiss on her forehead as I say good morning, kissing each of her eye lids.

“Let’s go take a look outside to see what the day has in store for us.”

I open the door, and Brandy runs out. I step out onto the porch, and look up to the sky, which is beautiful and blue.

There are a few clouds which look like great ships sailing across a vast ocean.  I observe.

Quickly my attention is stolen by little brown specs popping up and down, and running back and forth to the pile of lettuce and carrots our neighbors put out them.  I observe.

The squirrels are running up the trees up and down the trees. Jumping from limb to limb, giving the appearance the illusion of flight.  I observe.

A bright red cardinal is sitting in the bird bath, observing the bees which are busy dancing across the pink oleanders blooming in the garden. I observe, listen, and ponder.

Who am I?

Why am I here? 

Where am I going?

What is the nature of the world around me?

Four fundamental questions few have asked, or answered.  Sad –but true.

Think about this conception of nature. It is something that you must trust.  Outside nature, the birds, the bees, the mountains, and the clouds.  And inside nature –human nature.

This isn't to say that nature is perfect.  There are times that nature will let you down –and hard.  It definitely isn't truthworthy.

But that is the risk you take of life itself..

What’s the alternative? That you don't trust nature at all?

That would lead to the totalitarian state, where everybody is his brothers policeman. Where everybody is watching everybody else to report them to the authorities.

Where you can’t trust your own motivation.

Where you have to have a psychoanalyst in charge of you all the time to be sure you don’t think dangerous thoughts, or peculiar thoughts. Then you report all peculiar thoughts to your analyst, and your analyst keeps records of all these thoughts, and reports them to your government.

And everybody is busy keeping records of everything.

It’s more important to record what happens, than what happens!  This type of behavior is one reason we are eating ourselves up.   It’s much more important that you have your books right, and you manage your business in a profibable way.

In Universities, it’s much more important that the registrar’s records be in order, and the library be well stocked and the grades of students to be locked up in safes.  Protected from thievery and pilfering.

They are the most valuable property that the university has.

Furthermore, the main function of the university is, (any sensible person would imagine) to teach students, and do research.

So the faculty should be the most important thing in the university.

On the contrary, the administration is the most important thing. The people who keep the records, who make the game rules up. So the faculty are always be obstructed by the adminstartion and being forced to do everything but scholarship.

You see the thing is this, if you don’t have the room in your life for the playful. Life is not worth living.

All work and no play make Jack a dull boy.

But if the only reason for which Jack plays is that he can work better afterwords –he’s not really playing.

He’s playing because it’s good for him.  –which really isn't playing at all.

You have to be able to be a true scholar. You have to cultivate an attitude to life; and not trying to get anything out of it.

For instance, you find a shell on the beach, look at it, and it's beautiful.  Don’t try and get a sermon out of it. Leave religion completely out of the equation –God has left the building. 

Just enjoy it.

Don’t feel that you’ve got to solve your conscience by saying that this is for the advancement of your esthetic understanding –just enjoy the shell.

If you do that, you become healthy. You become able to be a loving helpful human being.

But if you can’t do that, and you can only do things because you gain something from it –it's profitable.

You’re a vulture. –Fundamentally!

We have to learn what the Chinese call "purposelessness."  They think nature is purposeless. When we hear the word purposeless, we think that of it in a negative manner –there is no future in it.

When Chinese hear of "purposeless," they think that’s just great.

It’s like the waves washing against the shore. It goes on and on forever with no meaning.

A great Zen master said, as a death poem, just before he died;

"From the bathtub to the bathtub I have uttered stuff and nonsense.The bathtub in which the baby is washed at birth. The bathtub in which the corpse is washed before burial. All this time I have said many nonsenses. Like the birds in the tree go twee twee twee twee... " –The Tao of Philosophy, Alan Watts

So when Chinese say nature is purposeless –this is a compliment.

The Japanese have a word for it, "Yügen."

This is a concept related to the effects and concerns of the deepest spiritual aspects of Noh. Yügen means "mystery," "depth," "darkness," "beauty," "elegance" and a tinge of sadness.

Japanese describe Yügen as watching wild geese fly and be hidden in the clouds or in watching a ship vanish behind a distant island.

"Yugen is a compound word, each part, yu and gen, meaning “cloudy impenetrability,” –The Zen master D.T. Suzuki

“Could it be possible to explain the style of yugen as the feeling you obtain by seeing four or five finely dressed court ladies who are viewing cherry blossoms blooming in full at the courtyard of the South Wing?” –The Zen monk Shotetsu

As wandering on and on in a great forest with no thought of return.It's in that moment that you are actually a perfect rational human being –you’ve learned purposelessness. If you think about it, all music is purposeless. I mean, is music going anywhere?

"Haven’t you done this, haven’t you gone on a walk with no particular purpose in mind? Carry a stick with you, and occasionally hit at old stumps, and wander along and sometimes twiddle your thumbs?" –Alan Watts, The Tao of Philosophy

Take a symphony for example. If the aim of music of a symphony was to get to a final bar, the best conductor would be the one who got there first, right?

I guess dancing would be the same.

When you dance, you aim to arrive at a particular place on the floor. That seems to be the idea of dancing.

I think of the people who always say, "oh I can't dance." Everyone can dance if the the aim of dancing–is to dance.

Well, it’s exactly the same with our life. Most, if not all people believe that life has a purpose.

So your choices are –trust nature or not?

If you do trust nature –you may get let down –there are going to be mistakes.

But if you don’t trust nature at all, you’re going to strangle yourself. Your going to fence yourself around with rules and regulations, and laws, and prescriptions, and policeman, and guards.

And who is going to look after big brothter to make sure he doesn’t do something stupid?

And whos going to guard the guards?

In order to live, one must have faith –not in any God lording over you.

You must trust yourself to the totality of the unknown. You must trust yourself to the nature who doesn’t have a boss –A boss is a system of mistrust.

The Lao Tzu loves and nourishes all things, but does not lord over them.

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