The Tao of Non-Resistance

The spiritual path is a path of non-resistance - i.e., a way of accepting what is. In electronics, a resistor heats up, and if it isn't cooled off it is liable to burn out and fail. A conductor, on the other hand, allows the current to flow through it. The best conductors are those that exhibit the least resistance. The sage allows circumstances to flow in, around, and through him and, in turn, flows through life without resistance. That, the following suggests, is the secret of acting in accordance with the Tao.

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      Act through nonaction.
      Handle affairs through noninterference,
      Taste what has no taste,
      Regard the small as great, the few as many,
      Repay resentment with integrity.

      Undertake difficult tasks
            by approaching what is easy in them;
      Do great deeds
            by focusing on their minute aspects.

      All difficulties under heaven arise from what is easy,
      All great things under heaven arise from what is minute.

For this reason,
      The sage never strives to do what is great.
Therefore,
       He can achieve greatness.

      One who lightly assents
            will seldom be believed;
      One who thinks everything is easy
            will encounter much difficulty.

For this reason,
      Even the sage considers things difficult.
Therefore,
      In the end he is without difficulty.

[Lao Tzu, "Tao Te Ching," Victor H.  Mair trans., p. 33.]

The "Fictitious Self" or Ego

The greatest insight in human history, according to spiritual teacher and best-selling author, Eckhart Tolle, may have been when the Buddha recognized that the "self" is an illusion. Calling this egoic sense of 'me' and 'mine' the "fictitious self," Tolle illustrates how this seeming separation of one from another is a form of "collective insanity" and the source, as the Buddha recognized, of all suffering.

"But there is a level within yourself," Tolle notes, "where you are already a full expression of the one life. You are already complete on the level of the timeless, the essence of your own being."

"It is quite a relief," he observes, "to realize that the world cannot make me happy. To demand that situations, people, places or attainments should complete me or make me happy is bound to be frustrating, whether I attain or I do not attain."

"(Life) loses its frustration," he notes, "when you do not look to the world anymore for your satisfaction or for your 'self.' When you give up demanding that people, places, (and) situations should make you happy and fulfill you - when you don't demand it anymore - then suddenly the ability arises to allow the forms of this moment to be as they are."

  "Because life at this moment," Tolle points out, "already always is as it is."

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The Dalai Lama: On Impermanence, Detachment and Death

"One day old and dear friends will separate, goods and riches obtained by great effort will be left behind. Consciousness, a guest of the body, this temporary dwelling, will depart. From this moment on, to renounce all attachments to this life is a practice of the bodhisattva."

-- H.H., the XIVth Dalai Lama --

The great paradox of humanity, one philosopher observed, is that we all realize that everyone dies, yet we have an unconscious and irrational belief that it will not happen to us - at least, it won't happen today. Who, after all, is prepared in reality for their own inevitable death?

"Let us say we have searched for solitude and found it, and that we have abandoned our home" writes the Dalai Lama. "This is not all we have to abandon. We must renounce our attachment to this temporal life, we must see that this existence is impermanent, whether it ends soon or later. Death will separate us from everything. To prepare for this departure, nothing else can be of use except the practice of Dharma."

"If we have acquired a noble mind," he observes, "that will help us. Even our closest friends  cannot help; we may have all the friends in the world and they could do nothing for us. . . ."

"This body, which is always with us and is precious to us," he notes, "must be left behind. We do not know when this will happen. Human life is uncertain; young people naively say, "I am young and healthy, so I will go on living." This is neither reason nor proof. . . . (N)ot one person can affirm with 100 percent certainty: "I will be alive tonight."

"In short," the Dalai Lama points out, "we will all die, we have no idea when, and aside from the practice of Dharma, there is no escape from this fact. So detaching yourself from the bonds of this life is valuable and useful, while the contrary is harmful. If we were to die this evening, we could prepare ourselves for this passage; and if we were to continue living, all the better. In any case, our preparation will not have been in vain."

[Dalai Lama, "Essential Teachings," pp. 21-22.]

In the attached video, the Dalai Lama recognizes our universal illusion about the permanency of life. He then discusses the process of coming to terms with one's own mortality, and the mortality of others from a radically different perspective from that adopted by Western philosophers and psychologists like the noted scholar, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. Nonetheless, like Kubler-Ross, the Dalai Lama observes that "tragic experiences also have some good aspects," and that by facing our mortality consciously we will develop useful insights on how to live well, as well as insights on how to die well.

We All Suffer . . .

"What now is the Noble Truth of Suffering?"

"Birth is suffering; Decay is suffering; Death is suffering; Sorrow, Lamentation, Pain, Grief and Despair are suffering; not to get what one desires is suffering; in short: the Five Aggregates of Existence is suffering."

("A Buddhist Bible," Dwight Goddard ed., page 23.)

We all, every one of us, suffer from the same, progressive and unavoidably fatal illness. Such is life. And the death of each individual in time - itself a relative and wholly self-referential concept, and an unconscious, unseen dimension of the blind perspective of our seemingly separate existence - is inevitable.

Individual and collective suffering - in their nearly infinite forms that are rooted in the desires of the self, groups and societies - is the sole symptom of this uniform malady.

This existential disease presents as the angst of the psyche and causes the sufferer to incur nearly continuous yet varying periods and intensities of irritability, restlessness, discontent, a sense of ennui or non-fulfillment, and/or outright depression. These multiform strains of suffering may be temporarily anaesthetized with varying degrees of effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) by one's ingesting food, drink, drugs, or raw experiences, or by projecting one's inner angst onto others or the world environment at large. Yet, all these 'solutions' are only temporary expedients, and will ultimately fail.

The only known effective treatment for these symptomatic strains that does not exacerbate one's condition and, hence the self-same conditions in others, is to forgo both one's physical and mental attachments to and dependence on these alleviants, as well as the imperative urge to project one's internal strain externally by word or conduct. (This is the pith and substance of Gandhi's and the Buddha's ahimsa, the 'beattitudes' of Jesus, and Hippocrate's dictum, "Do no harm.")

However, to go without these dubious "pleasures" - to have true forebearance without anaesthetics or anaesthetizing attachments and experience - requires that one becomes capable of resting "within." One must become capable of experienceing rest in the deepest and most fundamental "aspect" of one's 'Being' and one's individualized dominion within the "collective soul" of humankind.

To do so, one must either gradually or suddenly - through the intervention of Grace - discipline the mind and body, particularly the ever-moving and ever-arising thought waves of the mind. One must become capable of grasping and developing the most fundamental aspect of one's (and our) 'Being' - an "aspect" beyond the reception, perception and conception of sensory and mental stimuli - the nous of the inner "Self" that allows us to experience and accept ourselves and others, indeed the world as a whole, as exactly the way that it is in time.

Others have said, and I believe it to be true that this is a three-step process consisting, firstly of acquiring a belief in this "acceptive" Unititive "aspect" common to all "beings" and which is fundamental to "Being" itself, and aspiring to the transcendence of the individual "self" through the dilation of one's consciousness beyond the rational and analytic capacities of the mind.

Secondly, one must srengthen this belief through experiential knowledge of this deeper and more fundamental aspect of one's individual (and collective) "Being." This may be accomplished through the interrelated and systematic discipline and application of "self-examination" (being cognizant of the movements of one's thoughts and the emotions which they cause), "meditation" (practicing resting beyond the movement of thought and emotion in one's inner aspect of "Being"), and "prayer," or pausing to affirm and invoke this most fundamental aspect of One's consciousness and 'Being.'

And thirdly, through the accumulation of periods of ever-greater "self" transcendence, when one's suffering self-conscious is dilated to experience the deeper aspect of one's (and our collective) "Being,"
one comes to build one's faith into a knowledge (or gnosis) of one's "Being" beyond time.

And thus ends suffering, as one abides ever-longer and more fully  in this fundamental, asensual aspect of the Ground of Being itself.