Observing Life,
it will be seen that all things in Life move spontaneously
on the course proper to them.
Only in the manifested object, lab
eled a sentient being,there is the discursiveness of thought.
The distinguishing between alternatives,
the right and the wrong,
benefit and harm,
self and the other
and then the reasoning
in order to place a differential value between them.
All of which is nothing but the "fashioning"
of the conditioning prevailing in the
particular
sentient being.
The "sentient being" as a manifested object, architectured as so,
cannot help but exhibit such dilemmas.
But this architecture is not etched in stone.
What happens
when the discursiveness of thought is absent?
There is an unclouded clarity of a mirror
and
a responding to the moment with an immediacy.
The immediacy of an echo to a sound ,
a
shadow to a shape.
The fundamental obstruction to this immediacy,
is the prevailing belief that life presents us with issues
which must be formulated in concepts
so that alternatives can be envisaged and reasons found
for
preferring one to the another.
People who really know,.. a cook carving an
ox, or a carpenter or an angler ,.......
....do
not precede each move by weighing the arguments for different alternatives.
They spread attention over the whole situation,
let it's focus roam freely,
forget themselves in their total absorption in the object
and then the trained hand reacts spontaneously
with a confidence and precision impossible
to anyone who is applying rules and thinking out moves.
"When I chisel a wheel"
says the carpenter, "if the stroke is too slow it slides
and does not grip,......
........if too
fast it jams and catches the wood.
Not too slow not too
fast;
I feel it in the
hand and respond from the heart,
the tongue cannot put in words,
there is a knack in it somewhere which I cannot convey to my son,
and which my son cannot learn from me."
An expert swimmer
on how he stays afloat in a whirlpool answers:
"I
enter with the inflow and emerge with the outflow.
I follow the Way of the water and do not impose my selfishness on it."
Spontaneity....
In responding immediately and with unsullied clarity of vision ,
in any particular situation, there is "that" single course
which fits no rule but is the inevitable one.
This
inevitable course which meanders,
shifting direction with varying conditions like water
finding it's own channel
has been also referred to as
the Tao, the Way.
It is,
what patterns the seeming disorder of change and multiplicity
and all things follow it unerringly
where it tends.
The
spontaneous aptitude is called the 'te' in Taoism,
the Power, the inherent capacity of anything
to perform it's specific nature successfully.
TAO and
"te" forms the basis of a singing
that took place thousand of years back
which came to be known as the "Tao te Ching"
How to live
in spontaneity, where there is the absence of
reasons,
ends, morals and prudential principles?
Living in spontaneity is a natural
consequence of looking at,....
.....for whom is "how to live in spontaneity" of relevance?
For it is in that very sense of the question "How to?", any "How to?"
in which arises all self-created reasons, ends, goals and prudence.
Striving to be spontaneous
is nothing but contrivance.
When no owner of the "How to?" is found,........
.........in that
emptiness,.................. is complete spontaneity.
In that aloneness,........ is complete spontaneity.
In spontaneity, a
swimmer adapts to the varying pulls
and pressures of the whirlpool,
aware that it would actually harm his cause
to pause and ask himself "how shall I escape?"
With the non-volitional
cessation of goals,
the dissolution of rigid categories, ......
......the focus of attention roams freely
over endlessly changing panorama,
and responses spring directly from the inner core.
Living in
spontaneity is an immense liberation,
a launching out of the confines of self
to a realm without limits.