You Cannot be Neutral on a Moving Train

Life is subjective. It’s a pretty obvious statement, but its consequences are not recognized, its breadth not seen. We have never seen life through the eyes of another. We do not see our own bias. Imagine waking up in a pitch black cavern. You are told that the way out is north. Where is north? You might start walking in one direction at random, and eventually giving up and try to return to the original point to choose another direction. But you don’t know how far to walk. You don’t know if you’re back at the start or somewhere else. You have no basis upon which to orient yourself. This is the condition in which we are born. It is likened to a state of intoxication. You’ve lived your whole life drunk. How can you pretend to know soberness? There is not even a basis upon which we can start trying to sober up, we don’t know in what direction we have to go. The subjectiveness, our biases, are hidden, they’re a part of the eyes with which we use to search for them. There is no way to situate ourself outside of ourselves in order to judge our experience objectively. There is no vantage point other than the one within.

This point pressures us in many mundane decisions. Have you ever wanted to do something, only to postpone it because it “wasn’t the right time?” If only things would calm down at work, or I could save up enough money, or I could sleep better, or my husband would get his promotion, then I can start. Our whole lives we’re always grasping for a solid foundation upon which we can start to make our way. As soon as we think we have it, something happens, and we have to start all over again. Life is a constant flux, a storm which keeps tearing up our house. There is no neutrality, no solidity, on which we can make our way. We just have to find our way inside of the uncertainty. Whenever we decide to start walking, it will always be from the point of already having found ourselves residing in the world. It will always, with the expectation of having solidity, be imperfect. But that’s, accepting the cliché, precisely the perfection.

We don’t know what we don’t know. Although this seems like a truism, our actions do not reflect those of someone with this knowledge. Our general perception of knowledge is that of a pie chart, were we have a certain percent filled in and the rest is empty. This implies that we can be completely certain about the knowledge that we do have, that knowledge is binary, and that we can even tell the difference. But there’s no way to orient ourselves in order to grasp knowledge as absolute. Knowledge, in being known, is always relative. It requires that which knows, and that which is known. With this in mind, we shall take a look at our subjectivity once again.

Have you ever sat in a park next to a water fountain, trying to read a book while the birds are chirping? As you first sit down, it’s probably difficult to take your mind off of the sound of the water hitting the pond or those way-too-bright bird sounds. As time goes on and you start to get into the book, eventually those previously disturbing sounds fade into the background and you forget all about them. Until you leave the park, and everything is suddenly uncomfortably quiet because you had gotten used to those sounds. The sound of silence emerges. It’s the same phenomena during a quiet night as thunder emerges; the sudden sound makes the silence emerge as silence.

We define knowledge by contrast. This is the point of dualism, of seeing the world in dichotomy. Good and bad. Yes or no. This or that. Our habitual consciousness, that which we value, intelligence, is broadly defined by discrimination. It is, perceptually, the way we see things. The things that doesn’t change blends into the background and becomes set in stone. Our subjectivity becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy where we lose the control to change as we forget about contrast, about the very notion of difference.
We do not see the glasses through which we see the world. We are not even aware of their existence. Yet they’re always already there; memory and perception itself appears to us as already shaped by the mind. This is, in fact, what we come to define as the “Self”. Our glasses.

It is that which we are in the everydayness of existence, not much more than a collection of biases, of habits, formed by experience we didn’t choose to have. The country we grew up in, the culture we were taught, the faults of our parents, the math teacher we had in 5th grade, the heartbreak from our first love. These are the things that formed us, that has made us who we are. Yet they are utterably uncontrollable. The sense of ownership we feel in the decisions we make, in the person we are, has no solid ground to stand on. It is an illusion. The self is no more than an entangled nest of threads that has been spun since the dawn of time.

We are always that which finds itself already existing. Anybody who has ever been angry knows this fact. It is not of a chronological order, we always find ourselves already being caught in anger, in shouting at the guy who cut the line. Only looking back can we see anger arising. In fact this points the way out. Had we noticed anger as it arose it would have been in our control, it could have been “nipped in the bud”. This is what we must acknowledge, the fact of our finding-ourselves. Whenever we do, all that can be done is to count our blessings and start over. Finding ourselves in anger we are given the opportunity to let it pass rather than to brood over the fact that we got angry in the first place.

Man is he who does not know. Lost, naked, screaming; this is how we emerge. It is our birthright. If you ever think yourself ‘in-the-know’, it might be time to take a long, hard, look in the mirror. The path towards awakening comes to fruition in the abolition of that which knows. On the way there, it is marked by the shedding of ‘knowledge’, of views and opinions. Taking off our glasses, we shall be careful not to replace them with another pair. Accepting the lack of orientation, the utter confusion with which we are blessed, is the first step. Famously, the first ‘attainment’ in the Theravada “map” is that of the Sotāpanna, or stream-enterer, marked by achieving the “right view”, or “seeing the way out”. More important is the implication for the rest of us; we do not know the way out. We are as ignorant as the day we were born, and our whole “practice” might be that of walking in the wrong direction. We do not know.

Blessed shall we be, to encounter the teachings of the Dhamma. To have enough sense to listen, the curiosity to consider, and the resoluteness to practice. May it act as a guiding light on our path, and when we are lost we shall look towards the stars and find our direction once more. There is suffering. There is a way out. May our suffering guide us towards a fruitful practice, and may our practice easen our burden. May we ourselves eventually be a lamp-post on the path that others are walking. May salvation come swiftly, so that we can shine brightly forevermore.

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?
Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.
A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.
Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.
Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

Matthew 7:15-20