Talk On "Grace, Cosmic Jokes, And Controlled Accidents"

This talk asks why we never improve as much as we would like. The suggested answer is illuminating, but difficult to accept. We cannot will ourselves to improve. Instead, improvement is an accident. An act of grace. The best we can do, then, is to stumble into self-improvement by concocting a "controlled accident". Then we can come to understand that we are not in control. With this understanding, we finally get what the cosmic joke is all about.

Transcript

Okay.

So for today,

I've been really,

And this is just a continuation of my reflections over the past month or so.

My title today's talk is tentatively of grace,

Cosmic jokes,

And controlled accidents.

And let me begin with an example as I like to do often from my life from this past week,

I think,

Or the week before.

So as I think,

You know,

I have my little dog partner in crime,

Best friend,

Olive,

And Olive needs to go potty.

Like all dogs need to go potty and go out and pee and poop.

And I have a very complicated relationship with Olive going potty.

I get really impatient.

I want her to go and she doesn't go and she's just like dicking around and smelling shit.

And I,

You know,

I need to get stuff done.

It's like,

You know,

Please go potty.

I need,

You know,

I'm meeting with some friends.

I'm going to be late.

And of course when I need her to go potty,

She doesn't.

And so we've been dealing with this back and forth for the better part of five years now,

Olive and I have.

And it's been a great source of trivial,

But irritating stress in my life,

Sort of like a background sort of like,

Duka,

That's fine,

You know,

But it's annoying and it's irrational.

I know it's irrational,

But that makes it even worse.

Then you get the second arrow because I get upset because I'm being irrational and I know I'm being irrational,

But I can't control being irrational.

It just snowballs like that.

You know,

Sometimes Olive goes out and she does potty in like 30 seconds.

I get really excited.

Good potty,

Good potty.

And then I expect that that's going to happen next time.

And then it's like 30 minutes and it's horrible.

Right.

So we've been going through this cycle for years now.

And then the other day we were here on a field,

Actually it wasn't Groomy's field,

It was like this green field here in Vermont,

Right across the street from our place,

Our condo.

And,

You know,

We were doing our potty thing and I was getting irritated.

She was just sniffing around and what have you.

And at first having fun,

She's doing what dogs do,

But,

You know,

I wanted to do what humans do.

And it's just,

It's not,

You know,

Chasing Olive all over the field.

At least that's not what I wanted to do.

So I was irritated.

I was getting irritated.

And then something happened,

Something really cool happened.

And what happened can only be described as I suddenly looked at the scene from a different point of view.

And what I saw was the universe or the unfolding,

Or,

You know,

The cosmos and we were actors or players,

Right?

Olive,

My doggy sniffing around was a manifestation of the universe sniffing around,

Right?

Because that's where it comes from.

It's the universe manifesting itself through Olive.

And I saw that.

And then it was the universe,

The cosmos,

The unfolding,

Whatever you want to call it was the field,

Obviously.

And,

But it was me too,

Right?

I was the wave in the ocean.

It was,

I was,

I was part of that.

And then suddenly I had this sort of way of relating to what was happening.

And it was sort of like,

It was kind of me,

But I'm the universe.

I'm the unfolding manifesting in a wave,

Right?

In this ocean of the universe.

So it was me telling,

And I am the unfolding,

The universe telling Olive,

Who's also a manifestation of the unfolding of the universe to go potty,

You know,

Which is also something that just the universe does,

Right?

So it was sort of like the universe telling the universe to do universe things.

And it just seemed very absurd at the moment.

It was like,

This is silly,

Right?

Like,

And then what dawned on me was this was the insight or the understanding or the wisdom was the universe is going to universe and you're not going to stop it.

And of course,

Olive is part of the universe.

So Olive is going to Olive,

Which is the same thing as the universe is going to universe.

And of course,

Luis is going to Luis because Luis is part of the universe,

Which is the same thing as the universe is going to universe.

The unfolding is going to unfold.

And we're all part of this same shit of the same unfolding and we think that we're separate,

But we're all here.

And I'm complaining like to a different part of the unfolding,

Which is still me about the unfolding itself.

And it just seemed ridiculous at the moment.

You know,

I'm not sure I could,

I was able to convey it,

But that was the experience.

And it felt ridiculous.

It felt absurd.

It was totally absurd for the universe to be telling the universe to go potty.

And it was just really absurd.

And then when the absurdity of it hit me,

I burst out in laughter.

I laughed like a kid at myself,

At Olive,

At the whole scene.

I laughed probably in the same way that you guys would have laughed if you were looking at the scene through a lens and it was a movie or I sent you a video,

You would see the ridiculousness of it,

Right?

You would see the ridiculousness of Luis chasing after the dog,

Of the dog just doing sniffing because I know what dogs do and taking advantage of their freedom to be outside the home smelling spring,

You know,

And it would,

It would seem like what Mary Oliver calls in one of her poems,

I think the invitation,

A rather ridiculous performance.

Right?

And actually I'm going to ad lib and read you that excerpt from Mary Oliver's poem called the invitation.

She says,

Oh,

Do you have time to linger for just a little while out of your busy and very important day?

For the gold finches that have gathered in a field of thistles for a musical battle to see who can sing the highest note or the lowest or the most expressive of mirth or the most tender.

I beg of you do not walk by without pausing to attend to this rather ridiculous performance.

It could mean something.

It could mean everything.

It could mean what Rilke meant when he wrote you must change your life.

And this is for me a very profound Mary Oliver poem.

She's like,

Since then,

Like you're,

You're going about your daily life running from doing one thing to the other,

You know,

And going to the grocery store and you know,

Balancing your checkbook and doing your job and,

You know,

Playing your instruments and going to practice and meditating.

But as you're doing this,

She says,

I beg of you,

Do not walk by without pausing to attend to this rather ridiculous performance.

You know,

The gold finches,

They're singing for no obvious reason.

They're just chattering and you have your wild geese flying and there's the universe univercing and you're lost in your shit.

So Mary Oliver is able to see when she stops,

To see the rather ridiculous performance of the universe and laugh at it.

Right.

And that's sort of like I stopped and I saw the rather ridiculous performance of the universe with Olive and,

But I was part of the act and then I could laugh at myself.

It was all absurd and I was part of it.

So what kind of laughter was it?

And I'd like to reread Thich Nhat Hanh's piece with which I ended the guided meditation.

I laugh when I once,

When I think how I once thought paradise as a realm outside the world of birth,

Which of course is big for a Buddhist,

Right?

It is right in the world of birth and death that the miraculous truth is revealed.

Not in the deathless,

Not after,

You know,

It's right here in the world of birth and death.

But this is not the laughter of someone who suddenly acquires a great fortune.

Neither is the laughter of one who has won a great victory.

It is rather the laughter of one who,

After having painfully searched for something for a long time,

Finds it one morning in the coat of his pocket.

I'd been searching for the better part of five years for how to get enough patience to relate to Olive in the right kind of way during these potty outings.

Better part of five years failed.

Everything failed.

And then suddenly a week ago,

Not even trying,

Just pissed at the whole scene,

It dawned on me.

It was just this lightning bolt of clarity.

And I just saw it.

It was absurd.

It was totally ridiculous.

It was laughable in the best kind of way.

And at that moment,

I got the joke.

This is all a play.

It's all an act.

It's the universe doing its thing.

And I'm part of it.

I'm not separate from it.

This is the way things are.

And it's the way things are is funny.

Once you stop being personally implicated in it,

It gets absurd.

So this is a mundane example.

But one lesson that I think it brings is that extraordinary insights often lurk beneath the most ordinary of experiences.

We're always trying to look for that firework moment.

But it's not there.

It's in the midst of daily life that the magic is revealed.

So what this got me thinking of,

So how did that moment of clarity dawn upon me that very afternoon and not any of the five years before?

Olive was almost six.

But that day it felt like I was struck by this lightning bolt of wisdom.

And the lightning bolt of wisdom was something like this is the way things are.

Olive is kind of Olive.

Luis is kind of Luis.

The universe is kind of universe.

And it is okay for things to be the way they are.

It is okay for Olive to be Olive.

It's okay for me to be me.

It's okay for me to be upset.

It's okay for Olive to be sniffing.

Nothing has gone wrong.

Nothing has gone wrong.

There is truly no problem to be solved in this rather ridiculous performance,

As Mary Oliver would call it.

There is no problem to be solved.

Other than my nagging sense that there was a problem there to be solved in the first place.

When moments like this happen,

I increasingly feel that they're the product of grace.

Just the title of the talk,

Right?

So how is grace defined?

Well,

It's defined in the Merriam Webster's dictionary as unmerited divine assistance given to humans for their regeneration or sanctification or a virtue coming from God or a state of sanctification enjoyed through divine assistance.

So here,

I'm making no claim with regard to God.

I'm an atheist.

I don't believe in a cosmic grandpapa,

As Alan Watts would call him.

But I do believe that the ultimate nature of reality is mysterious and sacred in some way.

So I would substitute these things by the mystery or the unfolding or the cosmos,

Right?

Unmerited divine assistance given to humans by whom?

By the mystery of life of the unfolding,

By things that I don't understand.

That's sort of grace,

Right?

There but for the grace of God go I.

It's this idea that the forces of the cosmos are obviously and the forces of my conditioning are too much for this one body mind and that it's best to surrender to it,

Right?

And that's sort of like grace.

So then,

You know,

So I go back to this laughter that I felt and I can ponder the question.

So what did I find so funny about the whole event?

And I mentioned it's the absurdity of it all,

Right?

And how does this happen?

I think sometimes you stumble upon a way of looking that when you adopt it,

It melts away the seriousness of the moment.

When it happens,

It melts it away.

So the other day I was having dinner at this really nice restaurant with some really great friends of ours and we were celebrating a lot of things,

Anniversary,

My birthday,

A lot of things at the same time.

And we were having a conversation about something.

I don't remember what it was,

But we were taking it seriously and suddenly I started laughing.

And it's because for one second I got really mindful,

Sort of like when you were doing nothing and you got really mindful.

And for one second I was hearing the voices of my friends,

But they were just voices.

There's just noise.

And I was hearing like the clacking of plates and silverware in the background.

And I was wearing a down jacket.

And as I moved,

I could hear the sound of the down jacket crinkling against the chair.

I was very mindful.

And my mind,

Since I practiced so much,

It said,

Wow,

You're really mindful and it's happening on its own.

It was pretty interesting,

Right?

And then suddenly when all of this mindfulness came online,

I started laughing because it all seemed very absurd.

And they asked,

Why are you laughing?

I said,

Well,

You know,

We're here essentially paying a lot of money.

This is a fancy restaurant.

A lot of like paper that doesn't mean anything.

We're giving to someone else papers so that this person can cook a meal for us that in principle we could cook at home paying half of what we're paying for here.

We're exposing ourselves to COVID and we're doing it because we think that there's something special about coming to someone else's house instead of our house and having someone else cook.

And it just,

It just seemed all very absurd.

And the mark,

Like you get the plates and they're like,

You know,

The chocolate is dripped in a way that it seems like a painting.

And it just seems really a rather ridiculous performance.

Like the gold finches that Mary Oliver was doing,

Right?

It's as if I were an alien and I was dropped into the restaurant.

Like what the fuck are these people doing here?

It just all seems very weird.

And I laughed,

Right?

And they say,

Why are you laughing?

I tried to,

I said,

This is absurd.

And they said,

What do you mean it's absurd?

I said,

I don't mean it in a bad way.

It's just,

This is,

It's really funny how we humans are,

But we do to entertain ourselves,

Right?

Olive would never think of doing this ridiculous performance.

And here I am complaining of her sniffing grass,

But I'm like,

You know,

Sniffing espresso and a hundred dollar bottle of wine to see if I can taste Oak.

What the fuck is that?

That's crazy,

Right?

And it's,

You,

You manage to look at things in a certain way and then it opens up the cosmic giggle.

And it's a cosmic giggle because you get to see that the joke is on you.

Like all of this stuff that we're taking seriously,

It's just a game.

It's just games people play.

There's something funny about it.

Right.

But then here's the problem though.

One thing that I realized when I was semi depressed during the latter part of last year was that at the time I was pretty sad and everything was seen through the lens of sadness.

I talked about this several times here.

Note that I wasn't able to get the joke then.

I was very serious.

When I was really sad,

The joke wasn't there to be found.

And I think this is when we really need help.

When things are flowing,

They're flowing.

It doesn't really matter if you meditate or not.

They're just flowing.

It's okay.

Because at the end,

It's just about living and being,

But when things aren't flowing,

That's when we get into problems.

So what do we do when.

.

.

So one thing,

One big insight for me when I was in this period of sadness is that I realized that these different ways of looking that I'm talking about,

That you can look at things this way and they unfold differently or look at them this other way,

That these different ways of looking aren't optional.

I don't get to choose the way of looking.

Sometimes the way of looking is chosen for me.

I'm looking at things in this way and the more I try to get away from this way of looking,

The more it gets reinforced.

Everything seems sad.

Everything seems dark.

It doesn't matter what I do.

It just seems sad.

It seems dark.

And then I get frustrated because I know that there's other ways of looking,

But I can't look at them that way.

So what do we do when that happens?

So I think there's two things.

One that I've talked about here before,

It's wisdom,

The importance of wisdom.

When you are stuck in a way of looking that you think is not the most skillful,

But you don't see a way out of,

You can't see other ways of looking at the time,

Or at least you can't embody them.

So here wisdom comes online and it's a wisdom to know that there in fact are other ways of looking out there,

That you have in fact looked at the world and at similar things through a different lens when the causes and conditions were right.

Even though that particular way of looking may be inaccessible to you at this moment.

And then finding comfort and solace in that,

In the impermanence of the current way of looking,

Which your practice has also taught you.

And the fact that this way of looking will come to an end and that this way being stuck in this way of looking that doesn't feel good is part of being human.

This is Rumi's guest house.

Malice is here.

The dark thought is here.

Sadness is here.

And sometimes that's all that's here.

But you also know from your practice that that too will pass.

And then the wisdom is the knowing that that's just temporary,

That that's just a way of looking,

That there are other ways of looking.

And the example that I've given is when you're pissed off at someone you really love,

Like you know,

With my wife and I'm pissed off.

I mean,

Maybe that at that time love isn't here.

But I know it's there somewhere.

It may not be here now,

But I know it's there.

And I know it comes back.

I've learned enough.

I've lived enough that I know that.

So do nothing.

Don't speak.

Don't fuck up.

You know,

Wait.

Right?

So that's wisdom.

That's one thing that we can do when we can't laugh the cosmic laugh,

When we can't see the absurdity and what we're going through.

And then,

But the other one is that we can try and create a controlled accident.

There's a lot of recovering TMIers in this group and some still TMI people in this group.

And I,

One line that's really beautiful from TMI from Chuladasa is right at the beginning where Chuladasa says something,

And I don't think this is Chuladasa.

I think this is a common refrain,

But he says something like awakening is an accident,

But meditation makes you accident prone.

Right?

I think there's great wisdom in that.

I think there's not a lot of wisdom in the chasing awakening part,

Which is the whole premise of TMI.

But I do think that there's a lot of wisdom in the fact that instead of talking about awakening,

Fill in that blank with what you really want.

Deep peace,

Equanimity,

Whatever calm,

Beauty.

Right?

So getting beauty or deep peace or equanimity is an accident,

But meditating or you can fill in the blank.

It doesn't have to be meditating.

It could be reading Jeff Foster or it could be spending an afternoon in nature,

Whatever it is.

But X makes you accident prone.

I think there's great wisdom there.

And a similar phrase is,

Let me see if I can find it.

I find a similar phrase in Alan Watts who in effect says that what we're trying to do with this practice is create a controlled accident.

And he gives the example of this old story of a man who's fighting against a circus bear.

This bear is really special because the bear is a mind reader.

The bear reads human beings thoughts.

That's why the bear is in a circus.

But this bear got really aggressive against the handler.

And you're the handler.

And you know that the bear reads your thoughts.

So you try to hit the bear in the snout to have it release you.

But the bear of course knows that you're about to hit him because the bear reads minds.

So when you try to hit the bear,

The bear blocks it and it hits you again.

And you try a couple of times to hit the bear intentionally to try and hit the bear.

And of course the bear knows what you're going to do.

So he counters your attack and you're there flailing.

And eventually you realize that the only way of beating the bear is by hitting him without wanting to.

So you need to accidentally hit the bear without wanting to hit the bear so that the bear doesn't know that you were going to hit him.

And how do I do that?

By the way,

Alan Watts says that this is what Zen Koan practice is about.

The only way that the master will tell you that you answered the Koan correctly is when you stop trying to answer the Koan correctly.

So this is the idea of the controlled accident.

And this is at the core of this practice.

At least it's at the core of my practice.

How is it that I feel so much improvement in my life,

In my spiritual life?

And how is it that if I try to explain to you what is it that I have done,

I fail?

I can't really explain exactly what has led me to this space.

And it feels more like grace.

Of course,

I know there's things that I've done.

I meditated a lot,

But other people don't meditate a lot and they make progress.

So there's still like a mystery here.

But it does seem like I'm doing something,

But I just don't know exactly what it is that I'm doing that's getting me here.

That's the mystery.

So what can we do then to try and create this kind of controlled accident to improve without trying to improve,

To progress without trying to progress?

By the way,

Note that this is right at the core of what Thich Nhat Hanh is saying.

He's saying,

I'm trying to improve,

Trying to improve,

Trying to improve.

And then one day I find out that improvement was right here.

It was to my coat pocket.

And he says,

When you laugh,

You don't laugh because you got something.

You didn't get anything.

The keys were always there in your coat pocket.

You laugh because of the absurdity of it all.

You guys get it?

I mean,

When you're looking for the keys for three hours and you finally found them in your pocket,

You laugh not because you won.

You laugh because it's all so silly.

It's all so absurd.

That's the cosmic giggle.

When Tori is trying to find whatever she's trying to find out there and eventually she says,

Oh,

By God,

It was fucking always here.

You laugh.

You don't laugh because you're a warrior and you got fucking stream entry.

You laugh because it's so absurd that I was looking for this everywhere and it never left me.

So really we don't get anything that we didn't have,

But we do.

It's this paradox.

I can't really wrap my head around it.

There is this wisdom.

There's this way of being in the world that feels different,

But everything also feels the same.

T.

S.

Eliot,

That at the end of all the exploring is coming back to where you started and seeing the place for the first time.

This is Thich Nhat Hanh.

It's the same thing that Thich Nhat Hanh said.

After looking for things everywhere,

I found them that they were in my pocket.

And T.

S.

Eliot says after exploring,

The end of our exploring is coming back to the first place and seeing that it was already there.

So how do we incline ourselves towards that which I am saying we cannot incline ourselves to?

And the only thing I'm going to say and then I'll just leave it there and open it up for questions is that I think the answer has to do more with play.

When you're not in the grips,

So when you're in the grips of reactivity and you can't see a different way of looking,

Like trying is futile.

Resistance is futile.

That's where wisdom comes in.

But when we're not in the grips of reactivity like I am right now,

I'm just feeling generally okay.

When I'm not there,

This is a great time to play,

To play with different ways of looking.

When there's enough space around your current way of looking that you can embody other ways of looking and play with them,

Play with them.

I think this is what Nisargadatta is getting at when he says wisdom tells me I am nothing.

Love tells me I am everything between the two my life flows.

These are ways of looking.

What he's saying is if I look at things in a certain way,

For example,

If I look at things like Carl Sagan saying we're all star stuff.

I have comets and asteroids and space rocks inside my body.

And you know when you say we're so small,

You look at the stars and you get the sense that you're nothing.

That's what Nisargadatta was talking about.

When you look at yourself from a certain point of view,

You realize that you're nothing.

You're no thing.

You're a grain of sand.

You're nothing.

But when you look at things in a different lens,

Through love,

Through interconnection,

When you look at that beautiful sunset and you feel complete whole,

Like nothing's missing,

And you feel part of,

Not apart from,

But a part of the whole,

Then you can feel like you're everything.

But what does Nisargadatta say?

Note that he doesn't say that what you really are is nothing.

He doesn't say what you really are is everything.

He says what we are are beings that flow.

And between the two,

My life flows.

I look at things this way,

I am nothing.

I look at things this other way,

I am everything.

Between the two,

My life flows.

And according to this way of looking,

What we're looking for are ways of looking that seem more soulful and nourishing at any given juncture point in our life.

Sometimes it's best to look at ourselves as being nothing.

Sometimes that's being everything.

Sometimes it's best to look at ourselves in this way or that other way.

And when can we play with these different ways of looking when we're not caught up in reactivity?

So playing with Nisargadatta,

Seeing yourself as nothing,

Seeing yourself as everything.

Confusing yourself,

Fooling yourself,

Getting to see things in a different way,

Getting to accept the fundamental unknowability of things.

Why is Olive this way?

I don't know.

Why am I this way?

I don't know.

Can I occupy that space?

Can I see things as fundamental uncertainty?

So can I take whatever I'm seeing and flip it and seeing it in a different way,

Playing with experience when I can and there's space for it.

So that eventually the controlled accident I think is for me and I will end here,

For me when I was in that field with Olive and it hit me that it was all okay,

That Olive was the universe and I'm the universe and it's all the same shit and this is all absurd and Padi is absurd and everything is absurd.

I think what happened is that I had played enough with different ways of looking.

I had read enough,

I had thought about the cosmic giggle,

I had played with these ideas.

But they don't,

By grace.

And it sort of squares the circle,

Right?

It's not that I didn't do anything,

I did shit,

But I wasn't doing things so that at that moment I would be able to deal with Olive's Padi.

I was just playing,

I was just following that which nourished my soul and then one day all of that nourishment came like a bolt of lightning to deliver some wisdom and I was here to receive it and to see it and to laugh.

So I will end there and as always I'm glad to have a conversation about this or any other topic that this talk may have spurred.

Reviews

Interesting conversation, thought provoking, with some beautiful literary quotes to help see a new perspective.
Thank you 🙏

A wonderful reminder! Deeply insightful and light at the same time. Loved it!

Fun and delightful. Love the image of Olive 🐕

May your day be full of cosmic giggles