About Me and My Quest:
The pursuit of an understanding of different points of view about people’s personal problems and how to best remedy them.
Early on I couldn’t settle on any one approach but was fascinated with this question. Fundamentally, what does it take for people to change their ways? Finally I chose a broad Existential/Gestalt point of view that assumes one can perceive reality as it truly is, and by knowing and accepting oneself as a whole person with free will I could take responsibility for my behavior and make changes as necessary. That choice, which assumes reality is made up of separate but still interconnected things and events, didn’t work as effectively as I would have liked in part due to what I erroneously believed was a character flaw, my own that is.
I also was influenced by the simplicity of a well-regarded Zen poem that goes like this: **
“The body is the Bodhi Tree,
The mind like a bright mirror standing,
Take care to wipe it all the time,
And allow no dust to cling.”
The key point made in this poem is that by daily meditation and right action I could liberate myself from personal problems borne of self-centric illusions of an inner self and free will. But meditating and right action didn’t appeal to me due to their passivity and uniformity and also because of my impatience and lack of discipline.
Around the same time I felt teased by the transcendental message that the Zen Doctrine of No-Mind is based on conveyed in a venerable poem by the great Zen Patriarch, Hui Neng, around the 7th Century A.D.**. It goes like this:
There never was a Bodhi Tree,
Or bright mirror standing,
Fundamentally not one separate thing exists as such,
So where is the dust to cling?
What this second poem implies is that the activities of meditating and right action under the illusion of an inner self with free will at best leads to being freer of some negative beliefs about the inner self. But still one is not liberated from the illusory basis of personal problems because there’s no separate anything that holds the key to enlightenment and peace of mind. In other words, if the inner self and free will are illusions so is the basis of my personal problems that are attached to them. And so are the problematic effects that therapeutic tools and steps are designed to remedy. So as long as these illusions hold sway the basis of one’s personal problems would persist no matter how hard anyone worked at meditating, right action, or the like.
For a long while I couldn’t fully grasp or make use of the transcendental message imparted in his poem, which is that no-thing could liberate me from the personal problems and their basis that I was affected by. As a result, my sense of reality remained conventional and I had no idea how to make the essence of Hui Neng’s poem work for me in a practical way. Nevertheless, I sensed that the Existential/Gestalt perspective and similar points of view on the one hand and the Zen Doctrine of No-Mind and kindred perspectives on the other somehow could be integrated despite their apparent contradiction. But how wasn’t yet obvious.
In the meanwhile I pursued my self-centric quest for an answer to the fundamental question about what it takes to make changes and improvements as if I had a separate existence as well as possessed the power of free will. It eventually dawned on me I was dependent on, or felt that I needed, both the self-support that results from performing well according to my self-ideals and from other things and events to which I was attached that performed well too. When I or they succeeded I felt elated and confident about my self, and when I or they fell short of the mark I felt down and unsure. And when I felt elated and confident I had more power, or will, to keep coping and striving hard, and when I or they fell short I didn’t. Although some of my personal problems ceased and many were lessened once being authentic and dauntless became my self-ideals I continued to be dependent on self-idealization still not recognizing the illusive basis of the dependency.
But then it struck me that subjective knowledge of myself as an ongoing animate activity enables me to instantly get a firm grip on the inborn and persistent will to live I’m at one with and that all my activity is a manifestation of. Such knowledge informs me that what feels like a dynamic inner muscle under the control of an inner self happens to be a core aspect of my true nature. This knowledge made it possible to immediately, directly, and reliably generate the intent necessary to endure and persevere despite any failure to attain my self-ideals provided I’m also inspired by an understanding that it’s in my overall best interest. Realization of this spoke volumes to me as an explanation of how to liberate myself from my dependency on favorable results, in which my will to live was inspired when I met my illusory need to feel special but faltered when I didn't. This insight has endured and serves as the informing basis for both my ability to stay on the path of independency and the body of ideas on which Therapy from the Will is based.
** From Alan Watts’, The Way of Zen (1957), page 96, A Mentor Book
Early on I couldn’t settle on any one approach but was fascinated with this question. Fundamentally, what does it take for people to change their ways? Finally I chose a broad Existential/Gestalt point of view that assumes one can perceive reality as it truly is, and by knowing and accepting oneself as a whole person with free will I could take responsibility for my behavior and make changes as necessary. That choice, which assumes reality is made up of separate but still interconnected things and events, didn’t work as effectively as I would have liked in part due to what I erroneously believed was a character flaw, my own that is.
I also was influenced by the simplicity of a well-regarded Zen poem that goes like this: **
“The body is the Bodhi Tree,
The mind like a bright mirror standing,
Take care to wipe it all the time,
And allow no dust to cling.”
The key point made in this poem is that by daily meditation and right action I could liberate myself from personal problems borne of self-centric illusions of an inner self and free will. But meditating and right action didn’t appeal to me due to their passivity and uniformity and also because of my impatience and lack of discipline.
Around the same time I felt teased by the transcendental message that the Zen Doctrine of No-Mind is based on conveyed in a venerable poem by the great Zen Patriarch, Hui Neng, around the 7th Century A.D.**. It goes like this:
There never was a Bodhi Tree,
Or bright mirror standing,
Fundamentally not one separate thing exists as such,
So where is the dust to cling?
What this second poem implies is that the activities of meditating and right action under the illusion of an inner self with free will at best leads to being freer of some negative beliefs about the inner self. But still one is not liberated from the illusory basis of personal problems because there’s no separate anything that holds the key to enlightenment and peace of mind. In other words, if the inner self and free will are illusions so is the basis of my personal problems that are attached to them. And so are the problematic effects that therapeutic tools and steps are designed to remedy. So as long as these illusions hold sway the basis of one’s personal problems would persist no matter how hard anyone worked at meditating, right action, or the like.
For a long while I couldn’t fully grasp or make use of the transcendental message imparted in his poem, which is that no-thing could liberate me from the personal problems and their basis that I was affected by. As a result, my sense of reality remained conventional and I had no idea how to make the essence of Hui Neng’s poem work for me in a practical way. Nevertheless, I sensed that the Existential/Gestalt perspective and similar points of view on the one hand and the Zen Doctrine of No-Mind and kindred perspectives on the other somehow could be integrated despite their apparent contradiction. But how wasn’t yet obvious.
In the meanwhile I pursued my self-centric quest for an answer to the fundamental question about what it takes to make changes and improvements as if I had a separate existence as well as possessed the power of free will. It eventually dawned on me I was dependent on, or felt that I needed, both the self-support that results from performing well according to my self-ideals and from other things and events to which I was attached that performed well too. When I or they succeeded I felt elated and confident about my self, and when I or they fell short of the mark I felt down and unsure. And when I felt elated and confident I had more power, or will, to keep coping and striving hard, and when I or they fell short I didn’t. Although some of my personal problems ceased and many were lessened once being authentic and dauntless became my self-ideals I continued to be dependent on self-idealization still not recognizing the illusive basis of the dependency.
But then it struck me that subjective knowledge of myself as an ongoing animate activity enables me to instantly get a firm grip on the inborn and persistent will to live I’m at one with and that all my activity is a manifestation of. Such knowledge informs me that what feels like a dynamic inner muscle under the control of an inner self happens to be a core aspect of my true nature. This knowledge made it possible to immediately, directly, and reliably generate the intent necessary to endure and persevere despite any failure to attain my self-ideals provided I’m also inspired by an understanding that it’s in my overall best interest. Realization of this spoke volumes to me as an explanation of how to liberate myself from my dependency on favorable results, in which my will to live was inspired when I met my illusory need to feel special but faltered when I didn't. This insight has endured and serves as the informing basis for both my ability to stay on the path of independency and the body of ideas on which Therapy from the Will is based.
** From Alan Watts’, The Way of Zen (1957), page 96, A Mentor Book