Satori: the Awakening of Intuitive Understanding

(Transcript by Tob Hawk)

It has always seemed to me that Japanese systems of thought such as Zen and Bushido, things of that quality, are approached differently from our way of creating what we might term "authority". The oriental technique of teaching is not the clarification of an attitude toward a subject, but a coaxing of the student into the experiencing of extensions of consciousness for himself. Thus perhaps, while we have the term "Satori", which definitely signifies the development or release of the intuitive understanding of the individual, the term has almost as many meanings as it has students. Instead therefore of a very formal study based upon an acceptance or rejection of the authority of certain persons, the entire concept rides along upon a very gentle current, the current of what does it mean to us, how can we use these ideas in the strengthening and developing of our own way of life.

Therefore this morning we're going to take the attitude of what Satori can mean to us. Not what it meant to a Japanese or a Japanese teacher or professor, but what it means to us now, for that is the spirit of it. The spirit of it is universal, and every effort is made to prevent this universality from being locked within a creed or a dogma or even a discipline.

The emphasis is upon the person doing something himself. This is very difficult for Western man particularly on the level of beliefs. We are so used to being told what to think, we are so used to having certain programs presented, ready for acceptance or rejection, that we do not take very seriously the idea that we should evolve or create programs for ourselves.

Now a few years ago, for example, an ingenious person with a pen knife and some wood could whittle out or carve an infinite variety of pleasant interesting or amusing devices. We have almost given this up. We no longer do this. What we now do is buy a kit, in which all we have to do is paste the parts together. They're all cut out for us. We know before we start what we're going to finish with, all the thinking is done for us. Therefore, the creativity is taken out of the project.

Now, this has something to do with the subject of the morning: the problem of restoring creativity to our search for understanding, which we are all more or less in need of enlarging and improving and increasing in connection with daily living.

Now, most persons in the West and in the East also have certain basic convictions upon which they can build if they so desire. One of these convictions is that within the individual, in the core of our own personal existence, there is a spiritual or divine equation. That man moves outward from this core of his own divinity and in the course of moving outward this divinity is obscured. Obscured by the sensory perceptions, by the functions of the body, finally by the body itself. Later whatever impulse may come out through body is further obscured or diluted by contact with environment and the conflicts of daily living.

But we do have this belief: namely that there is a divinity within us and that this divinity represents the best part of ourselves. It is the true core of our being. Now, your concept of understanding implies that this divine root within us is essentially true, is essentially correct and that impulses coming directly from it are essentially good. This means that man possesses within himself the positive pole of understanding, this positive pole being his own divine nature. Any operation which is in accordance with this divine nature must be true, and the discoveries which this nature makes in its investigation of life around it must be essentially correct. How does it follow then that a human being with a god at the root of himself, can be so distinctly deficient in god-like attributes when it comes to daily living? The answer of course in the east is the traditional and familiar one: that man does not give this divine part the right of expression, that he locks it, and that he imposes upon his own divinity a very heavy barrier of humanities, of material, physical, personal things. And as a result of this uses his divine energy largely merely to energise and not to understand the world in which he lives.

If therefore there be a reality within man and this reality is divine, we cannot factually add to or really detract from this divinity. The god in man does not need to be educated. It does not have to be saved. It does not have to be sent to school. The god in man exists in a state of eternal knowing, true knowing. Why this divine part is not able to dominate and control that compound over which it is supposed to preside, gives us the very source of the psychology of Buddhism. This struggle between the divine internal and the intellectual doubts, opinions, fears, superstitions of the personality.

Understanding, if we are to find it then, is not something to be gained by culture essentially. We do not gain understanding merely by educational means, nor do we do so by putting understanding under discipline. What we must actually do is to remove from our natures in so far as possible that which is not understanding and that which is antipathetical to understanding. We must therefore educate ourselves out of our mistakes. We do not have to educate ourselves into our virtues. That which remains when we stop making mistakes is the truth. This truth is not something that has to be unfolded, has to be enriched, has to be cultivated. What we have to do is to get rid of that which is not so, that which in its ordinary purposes is inadequate.

Now, how can we tell with certainty, what is so and what is not so? The Bible tells us that "by their work so shall ye know them", and this is very largely the Eastern position also. That which does not accomplish good is in this fact alone not so, in the largest meaning of the term. We are not taking the position that evil is non-existent in the world of our physical functions — things do go wrong, we do have beliefs that do not help. But in the East the term “truth”, or “reality”, has a much larger meaning. A thing can happen and not be essentially right, or "so", in the largest meaning of this concept. So when we are looking for some guide by which we can direct conduct, we know that that which is itself good, must ever produce the likeness of itself. Good is not the cause of evil; joy, real joy is not the cause of sorrow; virtue is not the cause of vice. These virtues, these positive good things, produce according to their own kind. Therefore that which in itself produces discord and trouble, is not in itself good. The energy perhaps is divine, but the use or abuse of that energy causes it to contribute to trouble or difficulty rather than to harmony and security.

Therefore in our daily conduct we know that such actions, thoughts or words, as do not contribute to good, in some way lock our own understanding. Result in our being divided from the inspiration which contact with life should bestow.

So we look around us, we begin to estimate the various practices and policies which dominate our conduct. Our first question perhaps in the spirit of Satori is - are we happy? Are we actually satisfied with our own internal life? This does not mean “are we perfect”, nor does it mean that we should say to ourselves “I cannot be happy until I am perfect”. We have relative degrees of happiness. Today in modern thinking we term "adjusted" perhaps to represent that state in which our internal resources are sufficient to our immediate external or environmental needs. When we say “Are we happy?” therefore perhaps we mean “Are we content?”. Is our home a well-managed institution? As family are we close and harmonious and understanding? Are we quick of sympathy and slow of criticism? Are we reasonably patient? Do we really seek to understand the person who injures us or are we quick to seek revenge? Do we accept life with graciousness and regardless of what occurs to us do we continuously apperceive or apprehend the good that is everywhere present? Are we free from illusions and are we also free from disillusionment? Are we able to accept the problems of the day with good grace? Are we worrying? Are we fearful? Have we unreasonable doubts about Providence? Are we nursing grudges? Are we jealous? And further and perhaps more important to most persons — are we healthy? Are we enjoying a maximum of physical vitality for our condition and our age bracket? Are we able to feel that our energies are being used constructively? Are we lonely? Can we say or do we say to ourselves “I have no important reason for existing”? Are we simply sitting around, waiting for something to turn up? Are we constantly complaining against the situations around us? Are we seeking to shift responsibility for our own conduct to other persons? Do we gossip? Are we lazy? Are we quick to misunderstand the intentions of others? Have we rejected ordinary daily responsibilities because they were not sufficiently glamorous? Are we using our religion and our philosophy to escape life or to fulfill life?

All these questions we have to ask and out of our honest answers must come a certain measure of personal analysis. If any large number of these problems we cannot find that we have met constructively, then we are in need of understanding. We are in need of strengthening these internal resources, because just to the degree that we misunderstand anything, we are between ourselves and our own truth. And every form of misunderstanding leads to some kind of conflict, discord, pain or sorrow. As good cannot lead to these ends, the individual who assumes that he is always right but who in his own personal living is seldom happy, such a person cannot be right. And as it is very important for most individuals to assume that they are right, we have a very difficult and ludicrous situation, immediately obvious to other people but not obvious to ourselves: namely we are right and miserable. This cannot factually be. Because right based upon morality is a victory and a victory is a foundation for a sense of accomplishment of true victory, of well-being. If therefore a moral, intellectual or ethical victory brings with it no adequate consolation and does not make us larger than the problem we have overcome, we have no victory. We have achieved nothing. So we must continue our eternal search for understanding, realizing that herein lies the secret of our own security.

In the search for understanding the average person is not too well equipped. There has been very little emphasis upon this in his social system. His education has not equipped him to meet such challenge as this. Therefore actually he has to create instruments for the attainment of understanding within himself. To many persons this seems like a prodigious task, but nature does not require that we have highly specialized and difficult to acquire systems of culture in order to be happy or to be right.

Most persons who achieve happiness have discovered that it comes through a very simple procedure available to all. We are not really unhappy because of lack of opportunity to grow or to understand but through the misuse of opportunity, through the failure to recognize the importance of simple facts, always available to us and within the understanding of the most humble intellect. It is simply failure to use properly, it is failure to keep common sense rules, which we all broadly accept and apply to other persons but not ourselves.

Then understanding in the Oriental thinking is that which is left or that which remains when everything which is contrary to it gradually disappears. So when man attempts a head-on collision with his own temperament he is also likely to get into trouble. A person who has been for a quarter of a century subject to instinctive attacks of jealousy, finds it very difficult to suddenly stop being jealous. The chronic worrier finds that he worries whether he intends to or not. By degrees he has lost control of the power to control worry. The chronic angry person who has poor control of his emotions finds that after a lifetime of temperfits that it is not easy to suddenly smooth out and have a fine, noble, well-balanced disposition.

The reason why we have so much difficulty in overcoming ourselves is because we fight this battle on the level of our own misunderstanding. We simply say to ourselves, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have a temper like this". But when we say what we say we do not mean what we say. Actually, the only reason why we have the bad temper is because we basically enjoy it. We want to have it more than we want to get over having it, because man will always follow his most dynamic desire. When he really desires something he will get it if it is humanly within his reach or means, and I have watched persons who have long range plans of things they want and they will patiently go on for years, until they finally accomplish that which they most want to accomplish. And if the desire is strong enough they will never give up.

Now, anyone with a desire of that intensity could change any dispositional characteristic that he has. The individual will work 14-16 hours a day, seven days a week to achieve some economic end or to attain some popularity or distinction. Could if he wished to make any conceivable change in his own disposition. But his desire for this change is not great enough. Usually he does not wish to change his temperament, because in some way what he is doing, whether it be right or wrong, is giving gratification to himself. He has certain instincts and he will cling to the code which will permit him to express these instincts. He has a sharp temper, therefore he will not overcome the physical outbursts which are really expressions of exactly the way he feels, and he gains a strong personal satisfaction in telling other people what he thinks of them. This is so pleasant to him that he has no intention of changing his policy. He might realize that he should, just as the alcoholic realizes that he should not be an alcoholic, but his desire not to be is not as strong as his desire to gratify his own attitudes and instincts. This is what we have with personality defects: that these defects please us in some way, they satisfy us, they help us to get something out of our systems, and of course we have now given this procedure a psychological pedigree. It has now been blessed as a sanctified procedure by "saint Freud" and several others. (Laugh) We are told that the time when we feel like exploding we should explode. Because in so doing we let off steam, we reduce pressure, and while we may become obnoxious to everyone, we are achieving a great benefit in ourselves.

I doubt this very seriously, because the penalty for lack of self-control is greater than any possible advantages that may come from it. The individual who permits his bad disposition to alienate him from his friends, break his family and cause him to fail in business, is presented with so many problems that it is very doubtful if his internal life is brought to any kind of equilibrium by a bad disposition. He will probably become more and more embittered until no psychologist can do anything for him. Actually, it would be wiser to say that the individual is born with certain responsibilities to himself, and among these responsibilities is to a measure the civilization of himself, the bringing of his own life within the control of his own consciousness, not by forcing some kind of an arbitrary code on him, but by realizing the potential possibility of his own nature. So understanding is something which is his birthright, he is entitled to it, and because nature has equipped him to attain it, nature undoubtedly expects him to attain it and will penalize him until he does.

To find then the adequate means for understanding, means some kind of a basic point of view, not a creed, not a code, but the acceptance of a principle, a working pattern for a kind of achievement. Now, before we can accept any code dynamically, we must be able to truly believe it. That is one of our difficulties in the world today: we have many wonderful codes which people accept, but not dynamically. They do not accept these codes to the degree that they live by them. They affirm them, but they violate them in their own personal conduct, and as a result these codes do not accomplish their common social ends, which would be such things as peace, world peace, the outlawing of war, the man's correction of the problems of crime and delinquency.

But we do not live these codes, therefore we do not enjoy the securities which they might bring to us. So we have to have a code that is essentially within our comprehension, and in the Orient there is one simple doctrine that helps us to attain this, and that is the idea that any principle that we need to live with we can prove and justify within a few minutes in our own conduct now. We do not have to believe in revelations from some ancient deity. We can gain the insight for right living and for right decision by the mere contemplative observation of life around us.

Now, in the problem of understanding we have a good example we can work with, an example that is common to all of us. We observe some person and through gesture, action or word that person offends us. We declare them to be wrong. But perhaps we are friendly enough, or kindly enough, in our basic attitudes that somewhere along the line we let this person explain himself. We let him tell us why he took the attitude that he did, and it may very well be that we suddenly agree with him. We suddenly see why we were wrong in our judgment. If we are at all open-minded, if we are at all tolerant, if we are in any way in the spirit of our constitution and our declaration of independence and our bill of rights, we will ultimately give this other person credit when we understand him.

We usually got into trouble, in the first place, because of a hasty judgment. We took some symptom and magnified it beyond its merit. We took some emergency in his life and judged it incorrectly. Coming gradually however to know this person better, we suddenly realized that he was not an evil being as we first imagined but perhaps merely a troubled individual like ourselves; and discovering our own likeness in him, we suddenly began to have sympathy for him and perhaps might even go so far as to apologize — half-heartedly — for what we had previously said. We hate to admit we are wrong — but occasionally we will gather up all our resources and achieve a martyrdom in this respect. But we know every day that we observe something and that the observation is not according to the fact.

Buddha tells us of the man who looking down on the path saw what he thought was a dead stick in the road. He stepped on it, it was a serpent, and it bit him. Another man walking down the road saw what he believed to be a serpent and was greatly frightened, only to discover later that it was a dead stick. All of these problems have to do with our immediate interpretation of something. The quick look causes symbolical associations to bring us to false conclusions in many cases. So we observe that hasty judgment, judgment without thought, without true observation. To pass judgment upon one thing while our mind is on something else is not fair or reasonable.

So by degrees we strive for reasonable simple answers to this search for understanding. One of the things we come upon immediately is that in order to understand anything we've got to give it attention. Nothing which we do not even pay attention to can be truly and completely understood or appreciated. It's like the individual reading his newspaper at breakfast while someone is talking to him. To the degree his mind is on the newspaper he will not fully understand what is being said to him, and to the degree he listens to the person speaking he will be unable to read the newspaper thoroughly. Man therefore cannot do two things at one time and do them well, especially if these two require individual creative conscious thoughtfulness. The musician may be able to train both hands — but he does so by long habitual exercise and by a gradually developing subconscious control over them. But in our daily conscious experience anything that requires understanding requires attention. Attention means that the full resource of our thoughtfulness and our understanding must be devoted to the subject on hand.

Thoughtfulness, attention, concentration of effort. If a thing is worth understanding at all, it is worth understanding completely.

Thus the learning to direct attention, to really put ourselves into the work, giving of our own time and energy sufficient to make sure that our judgment is sound — now, there is no need to do this. There is absolutely no need for us to sit around by the hour giving our attention to something. This must be a choice of our own. But if we do not do this we have no right, spiritual, moral or legal, to pass judgment on anything. Our right to judge is based completely upon the labor of attained understanding. That upon which we wish to confer only a passing moment, or that which we consider only in terms of preconception, or in terms of tradition, or by some formula that does not involve our own conscious attention. Anything so neglected or so cast aside without thought, we should not judge, nor should we have any opinion on it, nor should we communicate to others any opinion about it. We should never have any opinion except a thorough one, and we should never have any judgment except that which is based upon the full experience of the fact. The moment we recognize this duty and this responsibility we begin to see where we've made a lot of mistakes.

Now, presuming for a moment that we have decided to give some matter which seems to be of considerable importance: the time necessary to do it well. This brings up an emergency in the life of modern man: the scarcity of time. The average person has not too much time at his disposal; therefore he must decide the proper use of time and here comes discrimination which is an essential element in understanding.

If, however, a particular subject is not worth ten hours of investigation in the hope of solving it, then it is not worth five minutes of argument or complaint, because it isn't solved. A subject which is not worth solving is not worth complaining about afterward, which is the common cause. I have known persons who have come for advice who are free to admit that they did not take the time or trouble to spend one hour in the effort to solve a problem, but they have worried, feared, hated and grudged over it for 20 years afterwards. They had no time for the constructive research, but they had plenty of time to allow themselves to gossip, and to worry, and to spread unpleasant word and thought about the matter for half a lifetime.

If it is not worth investigating properly then it is not worth worrying about at all. We have to decide what we're going to do with energy and there is no greater waste of it than the use of it in circulating unfair and ill-digested ideas.

So if we are going to do the problem at all we have to face another issue which is typically Oriental. How are we going to use the life that we do have? The purpose of living is that man shall understand, and every problem that arises which challenges understanding is important because it is for this reason man exists. Man does not exist to pay bills, or to make a career, or to run a nation. Man exists primarily to attain understanding, and all the other things that he gains through understanding or through the experiences of life are byproducts. Success is a byproduct, but not a purpose for life. Understanding is a purpose for life, The Purpose. And an individual is entirely wrong who says to himself “I can allow twenty years of life in order to be a success, but I cannot spend two hours to sit down and find out why I'm having a feud with my enemy”.

The solution to the problem of human antagonism is more important in the life development and consciousness of the human being than the accumulation of a hundred million dollars, because the 100 million dollars can still leave the individual with such a bad condition in his stomach, that like one multi-millionaire he had to live on milk toast for the last 20 years of his life.

The problem of finding the answer is important. If it is not important to find the answer, then it is not important to circulate false answers. If we have not been able to solve the problem of our relationship with others, then we have no reason to become antisocial and turn upon these other persons with criticism and condemnation.

We do so at a great waste of energy about which we will find nothing good accumulating, for all these antagonisms lead only to the further destruction of our own health and happiness. If however it should occur that we need further understanding of some situation, what is the end by which this understanding is most easily attained? This end must always arise from receptivity.

We have two attitudes taught everything. The more common is for us to impose ourselves or our opinions upon others. Most instances, if we were asked to give a clear description of another person, we would ultimately describe ourselves, because we would impose upon that other person every characteristic and trait with which we were most concerned. If we liked that person, he would have our virtues. If we disliked that person, he would have the qualities which are most unpleasant to us. His highest virtue would be that he is like us. His greatest vice — that he is not like us. In his conduct if his actions improve our conditions, he is our friend. If his actions improve his conditions at our expense, he is our enemy.

Always we measure by terms of ourselves, and if he is a mysterious person, and everyone has a stratum of mystery in them somewhere, the moment we are unable to understand this person we assume that he is going to do what we expect him to do, to think as we expect him to think and we impose upon his inner motivations all motives, ulterior or otherwise, with which we require him to be invested. So we really have no knowledge whatever of the other person.

Sometimes we will say, I've heard people say many times that they are infallible at judging others. The only reason why they are infallible is because they accept only the evidence which they wish to accept and give the other person no opportunity for rebuttal. Therefore continue to affirm that they are right. Most infallible people are also miserable, because no one is to that degree infallible.

The second way of finding out something is to keep quiet and let the thing tell you, and for the American people this is difficult. (Laugh) At keeping quiet we are a dismal failure with the perhaps the exception of a small group of quakers and other sects that practice quietude. The reason why we do not really like to keep quiet and let other people unfold themselves to us is because essentially we do not have very much interest in other people. The moment they say something it reminds us of ourselves — and off we go. We are much more interested in talking than in listening, although the old Chinese proverb says that we should only speak one half as much as we listen, and to prove that God gave us two ears but only one tongue. (Laugh) Incidentally, in the course of time, however, the tongue has become mightier than both ears (laugh), and when we do listen there's nothing we enjoy listening to more than our own tongue. We get a kind of a little closed corporation working in this situation. (Laugh)

The good listener is able to come probably nearer to truth and understanding than any other individual. Good listening does a great good to the other person frequently to be able to tell his story, and it does us much more good to listen to him explain himself than to try and explain himself to him. Also when we tell him how he thinks he may disagree with us, and quite rightly, but we are much more sure of our opinion than we are of him so we keep right on, and I know many people who have already decided how everyone else in the world thinks, and you can never undeceive them although they are wrong.

So we learn the Oriental method which is present everywhere in the simplest part of life. The attitude of the Eastern mind in the search for understanding is not to be negative but to be receptive. Now, there's a difference: to be negative means to just let other people flow in and drown you; to be receptive means to accept their thought as coming from them and subject it quietly to the rational processes of our own consciousness. Receptivity is therefore the definite effort to take a non-prejudiced attitude, a fair attitude.

Now, it does not follow that when we have listened and heard and thought that we must agree with the other person. It does not follow that the other person may be any more right in a particular matter than we are or any less right. The point is that if we can get certain perspective on these matters we come to a new basis of relationships: namely the democracy of both persons being partly wrong, which is a very important foundation. One of the good virtues of this particular situation is that when one person is right and the other person is wrong and that's it, even a marriage counselor can do very little good, the home is gone.

But where both persons are a little right and a little wrong, both persons have jobs, each one has the privilege of helping the other. If one person demands the right to help but refuses the other person the right to help also, we get a very frustrating situation. Both persons acknowledging that they are comparatively minute areas of understanding in a world of mystery, can help and strengthen each other. But where one takes an infallible attitude and moves entirely upon the assumption that they have to be right, you remove from the life of the other person the privilege of helping someone else to be better, and in so doing you kill their lives. This situation is so frequent today and there is no point in which we reveal less understanding than in this problem of always trying to prove that we are right. Remember we never have to prove that we are right. The only thing we ever have to prove is that we are not wrong, and there's a great deal of difference in these two terms. The individual reveals his degree of rightness — but he must defend his false degree of egoistic wrongness, and no matter how much he defends it he is wasting time.

To get the reaction then from life around us, whether it is in Taoism which is given a great deal to Satori, or in Zen, or any other group of teachings relating to these problems, the great experience of the individual lies in opening the channels of understanding, and to open these channels there is this great need for what Mentis calls "the child-likeness in man". Misunderstanding is always present where sophistication exists. The child-likeness in man, that which does not complicate, that which immediately and inevitably beholds things in their simple and natural forms - that type of perception is toward the truth, or toward reality.

In the problem of studying people conditions and so forth then understanding, maturity, gentility, refinement, what Confucius would term “the estate of the superior man”, the individual who is greater than his problem, this state is attained through a receptivity, a relaxing of self, the possibility of the experience of quietude under conscious direction. It naturally then follows to the Eastern way of thinking: that every civilized person should have a time set aside for the contemplative reflection upon life. Every day the individual should take a little time: five minutes, ten minutes, whatever is possible to him, and in this time simply dedicate his resources to the attainment of his own nature. It means also that the person even from childhood should be taught that keeping still is not a punishment. That being quiet is not a punishment. A family in which there was a great deal of discord that came to my attention a while ago, had a small child, a girl about five or six years old, and she was constantly in the midst of the family feud. The family's method of punishing her was that when she was bad she had to go into a room and close the door and keep quiet. They observed that she was becoming more and more delinquent, and finally under observation she admitted that she was doing all kinds of things wrong because her condition while being punished was happier than when she was good. When she was punished she was by herself and out of the feud.

Now, being by ourselves, or being quiet, or being what we call "alone", is to most persons regarded as a punishment. Nothing could be further from the fact. The individual who cannot make his own aloneness attractive is telling us that he is deficient in Satori, he is deficient in value, in appreciation, he is without the enrichment of his own inner life, he turns into himself and finds there only disquietude, fear, anxiety; therefore he rushes back again into the humdrum existence which has become valuable to him.

By understanding we gain the power to sit quietly and observe, to recognize the importance of the observational relationship to life. Observation, however, must have its depth penetrating power. We are again too much inclined to superficially look at things. Observation, or contemplation, of things is much more than merely looking at the outsides of them, but because we again have come to judge things much by appearance, it is very important to recognize the need for observing the subtle things, the characteristics and qualities by which symbolically the internal of that person is revealed externally. That we become more aware of the person behind the body and not merely its outer form.

When we study the small dwarf Japanese tree, for example, we observe not just the little tree and say “isn't it remarkable”. The overtones of this are more important and more remarkable than the tree. They may tell of a hundred years of dedicated devotion to the simple process of directing the shape and growth of that tree. Generation after generation has taken this as a responsibility. Now, you can say, we can all say, “Could there be any more total waste of time?” Supposing someone has spent 20 years in the training or molding of a bonsai tree. What has he accomplished but a little tree that will die anyway? What has he done? He has done one tremendous thing: he has shown continuity, he has developed self-discipline, and this same person could not achieve this self-discipline in relation to the tree without achieving it in relation to other things. The tree became the symbol, but this person has learned to accept responsibility, has learned to be true to it and has learned to perform certain self-imposed duty without question and without complaint, because actually he imposed this duty on himself. No one made him take this tree to shape it. He voluntarily selected the thing he was going to do but having made the selection he assumes a moral duty in himself, the duty of being true to that which he has chosen to do, and therefore having made the decision he must live up to it or lose face. He must do that which he has chosen to do, and he must do it with a full heart, in full understanding.

This type of training would be a discipline difficult for Western man but on it is much of the importance of our way of life. Sometimes we can say, and perhaps justly, that these Eastern disciplines have not apparently produced their full result in the East. We look at the East and we do not find that it is in every way a more secure and serene world than ours is. But here again we come right back to the original problem. When we are caught in a bad action, or as we are caught angry, we have an immediate defense - our adversary was angry also, or we were provoked into this, or we say to the individual who points out our mistake, “You are doing just as badly as I am”, which we regard as a withering retort. We haven't said anything but it seems quite dramatic. We have not proven that we were right. We are not proving that he is right. We simply are insisting that two wrongs in some way work out a solution to something, when they do not.

The question therefore that we are concerned with is not whether these rules are applied by other people or not. The question is: would they help us? Do we need the kind of discipline that these rules imply. If they were invented by a group of persons who never used them, all went against them from the beginning, this has nothing to do with the essential principle.

Are the rules useful, are the rules essentially true? If they are, we are concerned with that and that alone, because our problem is something we have to solve, and it will not be solved simply because we can point out 40 other nations that haven't solved it. Plus the rule of understanding, which experience has also shown to some Western persons, is based first of all upon this receptivity to as complete an understanding of our problem as possible. That we should never pass judgment until all the evidence is in. This does not mean that if we see a situation that might become dangerous that we must accept it without question.

We have another group of "happy souls" who take the attitude that we should never criticize anything, we should never doubt anything and that we should assume that everyone is doing the best they can. Much of this is true but not to the degree that man is expected to be gullible. Understanding is not gullibility, understanding is insight. Understanding is not only our estimation of the motives of the other person but to a large degree our estimation of our own motives. Here is where again we have a tendency to fall down. We do not sit quiet and analyze our own motives. If we did we would see that in almost every instance where we are imposed upon it's our own fault. What has happened is that some wrong motive in ourselves has been played upon by another. Recognizing our weakness it has been exploited, or turned against us to someone else's profit. We wanted something for nothing, that is the easiest way of losing money there is. Because it will make us open to every kind of a fly-by-night exploitation scheme. But if the individual will seat himself firmly upon the law that “what we want we must earn and what we earn we will get” there would be very little such exploitation successful. But because we are always hoping for a miracle in a world of law and order, we are gullible, we are vulnerable to every kind of false pressure.

The moment the individual knows his own weaknesses, he realizes how he can be imposed upon and how he must protect himself. Thus honesty in these things is the basis of security for ourselves and for those around us. Our own selfishness, gullibility actually contribute to the delinquencies of others, and we gain a certain responsibility for the person whom we permit to deceive us, because we want it to be deceived.

There is guilt in these things, not only to the person we blame but to ourselves. I've known so many cases where individuals over a period of years have refused to accept others for the values that are really there. They have refused to recognize characteristic traits in those whom they liked. They have refused to recognize the weaknesses in those they were fond of and also to refuse to recognize the virtues in those they disliked. Out of this unhappy dishonesty of living, trouble, sorrow, misery, sickness will come unless we learn to control and redirect our activities.

If however we are able to be receptive, we will finally discover that nearly everyone will reveal himself to us. It is a kind of intellectual jiu-jitsu or judo. It is a process in which by simply waiting we will almost certainly finally know the truth. We do not need to impose our own judgments, the only thing that is necessary is that we observe and reflect correctly. If we so do we will know the person who is suitable for our friendship, we will know those with whom we have little in common and we will know also those whom we may be required to watch carefully lest they impose upon us.

These things come from gentle knowledge. Let us assume therefore that we have made such a classification and we have come up with a group of persons who we know would like to impose upon us. We know that either from their own backgrounds, or from their needs, or from their codes of living, their economic associations they would like to impose upon us because they may take it for granted that they are entitled to. We know these people now because we have examined them thoroughly and completely. What should our attitude toward these persons be? Our attitude toward all persons must be equally poised, reasonable and just. That these are the persons maybe of a mind to be unfair gives us no right to be in unfair to them. Nor does it give us any real reason to hate them, nor does it give us any reason to reject them as persons. What it does give us is a certain watchfulness in which we are able to meet their moves as a trained chess player will meet the moves of his adversary.

Actually if we have gone far enough in our realizations and in our thoughtfulness, we will finally come to the recognition that these persons are moving from certain attained polarities within themselves. They are doing what is next in their own temperament; out of what they are doing if they continue long enough they will come to certain inevitable misfortune, and in this misfortune they will learn the lesson that they have to know. But as the scripture also says, "Judge not, lest ye be judged", and if that one part of the christian scripture was applied in the private life of the individual we would have fifty percent less broken homes and misunderstandings in this country today. But everybody quotes it — nobody uses it, and it is the same thing when you're working with persons with whom you have certain reasonable doubts. On the ground of friendship you may, without feeling, without prejudice and without temper, be entitled to try in every way possible to point out the defects of this other person to him, not to others. You may try to offer your assistance to correct certain faults or failings which he may possess and which you through thoughtfulness have discovered. If you so offer he may tell you what is wrong with you, and if you can't accept that criticism, you have no right to criticize him. If he is right admit it, and as you have a project you will try to help him straighten himself out, he will try to help you straighten yourself out. Now, you got a job which can be far more valuable than two persons partying and never meeting again if it can be done, and sometimes it can, but it is always defeated when we refuse to accept criticism when we give it. This is wrong and gives trouble.

So if we have actually come to a certain valid conclusions, these are not the basis of hatred but the basis of a deeper effort to understand and to try to recognize that what we do not admire is part of a wall of illusion with which this other person has surrounded his own divinity. That the divinity in that other person is still there and while we may reject certain attitudes that he holds we are still required by life to acknowledge that divinity in him and treat it with appropriate respect. We may not do the things he wants us to because we believe they are wrong, but our differences must be courteous and understanding and never becoming emotionally so stressed that common sense and truth are lost.

Thus understanding means to keep a tranquil attitude in all emergency. To realize that the moment we lose control of ourselves we lose control of every situation. Whereas if we can be the one in a group to hold this control of ourselves, we can perhaps contribute to the security of all the others. The person who does not panic is the important one in any emergency, and to allow emotions to take over as hatred, fear, grievance, jealousy — these are all forms of emotional panic: where they come in, the power of leadership is destroyed, the power of direction is lost and everyone ends in a common misfortune.

The Satori has in it this concept of being quiet in the presence of situations and coming out of these situations instructed by them and not destroyed by them, and the proof that we are instructed by any situation is that we can look back upon it with gratitude. When we can look back upon our former enemy with gratitude we have mastered the problem. When we can look back upon a confused life with gratitude it means that we have finally internally found the truth in that life. For everything that happens can be regarded with gratitude. We may be grateful because under a pressure of circumstances we made a wise decision and have had the privilege of maintaining that wisdom, which is more to be desired than an easy life. It may also be that looking back upon the situation we discover that we made a serious mistake. The fact that we have discovered the mistake, have found out that it is a mistake, has been of the vastest aid to our consciousness, therefore for this too we should be and must be grateful.

Out of all relationships well-met, gratitude can naturally come, and from anything we can look aback upon with sincerity we grow. But anything that we look back upon in which we realize that we were less than we should be, this becomes the basis of an instruction which we should accept and try distinctly to strengthen the areas in which we were weak. Actually we are here for these purposes and all the security and peace that we seek will come as byproducts of being right ourselves.

Out of this relaxation also, which permits the other person to flow into us or the other circumstance to become part of our own nature, there is another situation arise. Namely this complete relaxation of ourselves permits the divine, the consciousness in us, to flow out unimpeded and move into the object of our attention.

Thus Satori is an exchange of consciousness. It is a strange subtle thing which perhaps can increase and grow until it may be a total capacity to be someone else, or to attain an identity with that which is now strange or different.

Satori means that while we are accepting his story we are moving out with positive factors with which to understand him. As he is feeling desperately to reach our consciousness with his complaint, we are also able, if we are completely relaxed, to release within ourselves the only power within us which can understand him, and that is this power which we share with him for regardless of all differences in our existences we share one life. And if we move upon the level of this life we have understanding. We have not only sharing but common identity. But upon any other level we have confusion.

The only way in which we can release this life in an unconditioned form from ourselves, or can disentangle it from its confusion when it comes from him to us, is to be completely one with this consciousness element. We have to be able to accept consciousness without modifying thought reaction. If we are able to do this we have a measure of understanding which is not a technical thing when it happens to us, but it arises from very technical causes within ourselves. We all have judgments about persons and places. If these judgments arise from a complete quietude within ourselves, they have the greater probability of being correct. The moment however they are influenced by any individual or collective preconception, the degree of error sharply increases. Therefore expectancy, which is our determination to see things as we thought they were, can forever paralyze judgment. But if we have only a gentle receptivity to the thing as it is and have the willingness to accept all things as they are, we shall have a greater wisdom, and a greater insight, and a greater charity with which to face confusion or confusing problems.

Now, in the Eastern symbolism and in the way of life of these people great effort has always been made not only to discover the life in things, but to symbolically preserve that life, to make it the basis of arts, and sciences, and philosophies. To develop from all of these things that are observed codes of conduct suitable to bring maturity and wisdom to the individual. Thus by understanding we place ourselves in a university of life. We accept all things as useful. We deny nothing. But we may be forced by our own discriminating faculties to say that some things are more immediately needed by us than others. There are things which at the present time we simply cannot understand. Our duty then is to be careful that we do not misunderstand, so in the presence of anything that is not understandable we refrain from any effort to impose our own interpretation upon it. Recognizing that as growth unfolds ourselves that which is not understood will come ultimately within our comprehension.

One of the reasons we lock ourselves against progress is because of the prevailing fear that we have of the thing which is not understood. We have had this fear individually and collectively since the beginning of time. We have demanded and required failure for that which is not understandable. We have persecuted everyone who has had a new idea and actually hoped he would fail. This is because of our imposing of negation upon that which is beyond comprehension. We make the mysterious dangerous. We demonstrate carefully and constantly that we cannot cope with mystery. Therefore wherever mystery imposes itself upon us understanding says that we must withhold all judgment. We must keep ourselves in a condition of suspended decision, waiting for the facts to reveal themselves, and not imposing limitation upon the new or enthusiastically recognizing a thing to be better simply because it is innovation. We must preserve our judgment in these things. If we hope that the new will be accomplished we will exaggerate, if we fear that it will be accomplished we exaggerate.

The only proper course is to wait with proper expectancy the fulfillment of things of themselves or from themselves, or the development of courses already set in motion to their reasonable ends. If we fear, however, that these reasonable ends may not be good, if it is obvious that some line of activity is not likely to be conducive of common benefit, then we must either defend ourselves by greater understanding from the hazard that it presents, or else we must unite in a factual way to prevent that which in our maturity of understanding we decide is dangerous or detrimental.

But we are not sure what is dangerous or what is detrimental unless we can approach these so-called dangerous things also with complete internal relaxation. It is the decision of the relaxed consciousness that alone has the validity to demand support and defense, because that means that regardless of what we're doing we are doing it with the fullest understanding that we possess, and in the majority of instances this is not the case. Our actions are not the result of the fullest effort that we can make to understand. Our actions are the result of a definite evasion of the responsibility of adequate searching, the willingness to substitute a decision for the study of the substance or subject itself.

All of these points then bring us to the essential idea of this whole concept of understanding: namely man's gracious approach to what he needs to know, graciously seeking and also in everything that he does attempting to add a dimension of understanding. The moment he does this nothing is trivial anymore, because there is nothing that the human being can do, which will not directly or indirectly add to his understanding. He will grow if he accepts growth and if he adds to his present formula for doing things this concept of action as the cause of growth, he will gain more from his activities and his endeavors.

Everything that man does he does because natural law maintains the processes by which he works, thus every action is an invitation to study the universe, to contemplate its workings and to finally bring himself in harmony with its principles. Each day then if the person will quietly examine into the problems of understanding, taking five or ten minutes for the digestion of his own life, taking a little time to determine what has been important and to review how it could have been more important, had he been able to use relaxed understanding rather than tensed reaction. And out of it will come this gradual desire to attain relaxed understanding, which is a kind of meditation, it is also a kind of prayer, it's a sacred thing in itself, for it is only in this quietude of man suspending judgment in facing the real, that man can really come to know God, or come to know the divine power in things, and to separate the true spiritual agencies of life from those tense structures which are the result of powerful emotional theologies.

The real religion of man comes in the quiet contemplation of the works of the infinite. And as man studies these works in the world around him, within his own nature and in the lives of those with whom he is associated, this study can lead to a reflection, and this reflection — to a powerful religious conviction, a religion based upon experience, upon internal contemplation and maturity. These are the principles that underlie this search for understanding, and we hope that you will find in this seeking a new and profitable way of conserving your own resources and attaining at the same time greater ends than you have ever previously been able to accomplish.