That seems logical enough. If the stove is hot, remove your hand. But, when it comes to things that have a hold on us, useless. We can't let go. All the wisdom in the world won't allow us to. Why? Because we're powerless.
It's a bit like trying to let go of a live wire. Your grip latches around it while you get electrocuted. Let go? You wish...
There is a Zen koan somewhere that says it well: you can't move forward, you can't go backward, you can't stay in place. What can you do??
Nothing.
There is no letting go. There is no waiting, humility or surrender. There is powerlessness. Giving up; but this is not within your power to decide.
There is nothing to do; except avoid getting into high voltage situations in the future. Stop touching live wires (or keep getting sizzled.) But know this: once you do, letting go is not an option.
The myth of letting go.
ReplyDeleteWell, maybe the metaphor ‘let go’ has been over abused. This letting go refers to a cessation. It can be a very useful metaphor. As one let go, let go of its self-induced, self-inflicted suffering, as one sees that one is entirely responsible for this suffering, one hopefully let go of it. When this happens, there is a release of inner tension, and a feeling of freedom. Neither of those are absolutes. What causes a lot of confusions is that human beings tend to overinflate everything. A mild difference in the way we perceive things is often seen as a radical and permanent shift. As you cease hurting yourself, you begin to experience things differently, see how ‘stupid’ you were, and don’t repeat the same mistake.
For example you mention resentment; it might come up to your mind that you are hurting yourself badly as you make use of this resentment. You are the first victim of this self-fabricated resentment. Resentment can be very corrosive to one self. And there is a possibility for some that simply seeing this, puts an end to it instantly. Seeing what we do right now, and how our attitudes affect us, puts an end to it. That seeing dissolve the whole thing. It is quite ‘stupid’ in fact, just seeing that my resentments hurts me before anyone one else is enough to put an end to the whole thing. And so in this scenario, only the resentment was let go of.
In regard to your use of the Zen koan, first you must be the koan, not just fake it, or attempt at seeing what it might be like, not just talk about it or repeat its words, but actually live, feel, experience first hand this koan. I mean feel and be the complete impasse, feel the failure of words, feel the complete inadequacy of any attempt at being able to conceptualize (grasp) the situation. Feel deeply and with sincerity your own failure. That koan is asking something, in fact it is yelling something quite loudly and repeatedly to you; It is yelling ‘get out of my way’.’ I am, no one else besides me’. And it won’t let go as long as ‘you’ remain. Of course you are powerless, but you were always so to start with. You only had the illusion that you were powerful, that you could do. And as one realizes that one cannot do, one does not ask any ‘what can ‘I ‘do?’. In this scenario/koan, you are let go of your own self. That koan challenges the self to the core.