Fractals Of Wisdom ~ "Melting Ice Cubes" Charlotte Joko Beck
FRACTALS OF WISDOM In this new series, I want to highlight books that have inspired me. I'll take a chapter and read it aloud. I'm very excited to compose music that includes Binaural Beats to get your brain into a state of Alpha or "Flow." It's so fun to create these, and I'm excited to share. Thank you for listening! Inspiration: Melting Ice Cubes Book: Nothing Special Author: Charlotte Joko Beck Music: Tyler Summers Reading: Tyler Summers
Transcript
Let's imagine for a moment that humans are large ice cubes,
About two feet along each edge,
With little heads and spindly feet.
This is our life as humans most of the time,
Running about like ice cubes,
Bumping into one another sharply.
Often we hit each other hard enough to shatter our edges.
To protect ourselves,
We freeze as hard as we can and hope that when we collide with others,
They will shatter before we do.
We freeze because we're afraid.
Our fear makes us rigid,
Fixed,
And hard,
And we create mayhem as we bump into others.
Any obstacle or unexpected difficulty is likely to shatter us.
Ice cubes hurt.
Ice cubes have a hard time.
When we're hard and rigid,
No matter how careful we are,
We tend to slip and slide out of control.
We have sharp edges that do damage,
And we hurt not only others,
But ourselves.
Because we're frozen,
We have no water to drink,
And so we're thirsty all of the time.
At cocktail parties,
We soften up a bit and drink,
But such drinking is not really satisfying because of our underlying fear,
Which keeps us frozen and parched.
The softening is only temporary and superficial.
Underneath,
We're still thirsty and yearning for satisfaction.
Some of the more intelligent ice cubes seek other ways out of their miserable lives.
Noticing their sharp edges and their difficulties in meeting one another,
They'll try to be nice and cooperative.
That helps someone.
Still,
An ice cube is an ice cube,
And the basic sharpness remains.
A lucky few,
However,
May meet an ice cube that has actually melted and become a puddle.
What happens if an ice cube meets a puddle?
The warmer water in the puddle begins to melt the ice cube.
Thirst is less and less of a problem.
The ice cube begins to realize that it does not have to be hard,
Rigid,
And cold.
There is another way to be in the world.
The ice cube learns how to create its own heat by the simple process of observation.
The fire of attention begins to melt its hardness,
Observing how it bumps into others and causes harm.
Seeing its own sharp edges,
The ice cube begins to realize how cold and rigid it has been.
A strange thing begins to happen.
As ice cubes begin to notice their own activities,
To observe their ice-cubeness,
They become softer and mushier.
And their understanding grows,
Simply by observing what they are.
The results are contagious.
Suppose the two ice cubes are married.
Each is protecting itself and trying to change the other,
But neither can really change or fix the other,
Since they both are rigid and hard with sharp edges.
If one ice cube begins to melt,
However,
The other ice cube,
If it gets close at all,
Has to begin to melt also.
And it,
Too,
Begins to gain some wisdom and insight.
Instead of seeing the other ice cube as a problem,
It begins to be aware of its own ice-cubeness.
Both learn that the witness,
The awareness of one's own activity,
Is like a fire.
The fire cannot be stoked by effort.
One cannot try to melt oneself.
The melting is the work of the witness,
Which in one sense is nothing at all and in another sense is everything.
Not I,
But my Father in me,
As Christ said.
The awareness,
The witness within,
Is the Father.
Which is what we truly are.
In order to allow the witness to do its work,
However,
We must not be caught up in stiffening and hardening ourselves,
Throwing our weight around,
Bumping into others and trying to change them.
If we do these things,
We must be aware so that the witness can do its work.
Some ice cubes begin to get the idea and do the necessary work.
They may even get a little mushy.
The first thing I notice about Zen students who are practicing is that their faces change.
They're softer,
They laugh differently,
They get a little mushy.
But the work is difficult and some ice cubes,
Even as they begin to soften,
Get sick of the process.
They say,
I just want to go back to being a comfortable ice cube.
True,
It's lonely and cold,
But at least I didn't feel so much distress.
I just don't want to be aware anymore.
The truth is,
However,
That once one softens and becomes a bit mushy,
One can't become hard again.
You might say that that's one of the laws of ice cubes,
With apologies to physics.
An ice cube that has become mushy can never forget its mushiness.
That's why I say to people,
Don't practice unless you're ready for the next stage.
We can't go back.
Once we start to practice,
Once we're a little mushy,
We're a little mushy and that's that.
We may think we can return to life as it was before,
And we may even try to do it,
But we can't violate the process,
The basic law of ice cubes.
Once we're a bit mushy,
We're forever a bit mushy.
Some ice cubes,
Because they have only a sporadic practice,
Change only slightly over a lifetime,
Becoming just a little mushy.
Those who truly understand the path and practice diligently,
However,
Actually turn into a puddle.
The funny thing about such puddles is that as other ice cubes walk through them,
These ice cubes begin to melt and get a little mushy.
Even if we only melt slightly,
Others around us soften too.
It's a fascinating process.
Many of my students are mushy.
They often hate to go through the process.
When we come down to it,
However,
The work of an ice cube is to melt.
When we're still frozen solid,
We think that our work is to go around slamming other ice cubes or being slammed by them.
In such a life,
No one ever really meets another.
Like bumper cars,
We hit and bounce off of others,
And then pass on.
It's a very lonely and cold life.
In fact,
What we really want is to melt.
We want to be a puddle.
Perhaps all that we can say about practice is that we're learning how to melt.
At intervals we say,
Let me alone,
Stay away,
Just let me be an ice cube.
Once you've started to melt at all,
However,
We can't forget.
Eventually what we are as ice cubes is destroyed.
But if the ice cube has become a puddle,
Is it truly destroyed?
We could say that it's no longer an ice cube,
But its essential self is real.
The comparison of human life to an ice cube is of course silly.
I see people battering one another,
However,
Hoping that by battering others something will be gained.
It never is.
Someone has to stop battering and just sit with being an ice cube.
We need to just sit and watch.
To feel what it's like to be what we are,
Really experience that.
We can't do much about the other ice cubes.
In fact,
It's not our business to do so.
The only thing we can do is more and more to summon that witness.
When we turn to the witness,
We begin to melt.
If we melt,
Other ice cubes do too,
Little by little.
Once we've begun to melt,
It's perfectly natural to resist the melting.
You want to go back to being frozen,
Trying to control and manipulate all the other frozen creatures we meet.
I never worry about that.
Because for anyone who's been practicing for a while,
There's too much knowing.
We can't become rigid again.
Because deep within us,
We know something we didn't know before.
We can't go back.
The next time we speak sharply,
Or complain,
Or try to fix others or analyze them,
We're playing a futile ice cube game.
Such efforts just don't work.
What works is to cultivate the witness,
Which is always there.
Though we can't see it if we're busy banging other ice cubes.
Even though we may not allow space in our lives for the witness,
It's always there.
It's who we are.
Though we all often try to avoid it,
We can't.
As we become softer,
We find that to be a puddle attracts a lot of other ice cubes.
Sometimes,
Even the puddle would rather be an ice cube.
The more like a puddle we become,
The more work there is to be done.
A puddle acts as a magnet for the ice cubes that want to melt.
So as we begin to drip more,
We attract more work to ourselves.
And that's fine.
Student,
I like the analogy because when the puddle is clear,
It contains the hole in the reflection.
Could you talk more about how the witness is born?
Joko,
The witness is always there.
But as long as an ice cube can't see anything to do except to bump other ice cubes or to avoid them,
It's as though the witness can't function.
There has to be a change in the ice cube to allow it to become aware of its own activity.
As long as our total awareness is turned to what the other ice cubes are doing,
The witness can't appear,
Even though it's always present.
When we begin to see,
Oh the problem isn't with the other ice cubes,
I guess I have to look at myself,
The witness automatically appears.
We begin to realize that the problem is not out there,
It's always here.
Student,
In the ice cube's state,
I can entertain the delusion that nothing can get in or out,
So I'm protected.
When the mushiness starts,
However,
Then it dawns on me that everything interpenetrates including pollution,
War,
Hopelessness,
And so forth.
The insight into this interpenetration can be frightening and discouraging.
Could you talk about the fear and the other emotional states that arise when one is between being an ice cube and a puddle?
Joko It's true,
The intermediary stage of being mushy involves a lot of fear and resistance.
In a way,
Being an ice cube works,
Or seems to work.
It's just that the ice cube is lonely and thirsty.
When we're mushy,
We're more vulnerable to others.
If we don't see what's happening,
We experience more fear.
So that mushy stage,
Which is the beginning of the melting,
Is always accompanied by resistance.
By fear of having the world rush in on us,
We want to stiffen ourselves up again.
Because we're beginning to have demands put upon us that we don't know how to handle.
The demands may be unwelcome,
Our resistance will attempt to solidify itself.
Still,
The resistance can't last.
People sometimes tell me,
I've been practicing six months and everything in my life is worse.
Before practice,
They had the illusion of knowing who they were.
Now they are confused and that doesn't feel good.
It may feel terrible,
But it's absolutely necessary.
Unless we realize this fact,
We may become totally discouraged.
Practice is sometimes most unpleasant.
The idea that everything feels steadily better,
Onward and upward,
Is quite untrue.
Student.
When I first started sitting,
It was like being dead from the neck down.
I just felt like the ice cube you described,
A head on top,
Feet on the bottom,
And a walking dead computer in between.
Practice has released a lot of feeling in me,
For example.
I've done a great deal of crying,
Which feels like melting down into a puddle.
Joko.
Good.
In most of my students,
I observe melting going on.
It's often not pleasant,
But in a way it's wonderful,
Too.
We sense that we're becoming more truly who we really are.
There's always resistance,
Too.
The two go hand in hand.
People think resistance is something terrible.
It's the very nature of practice to resist.
It's not something extra.
Student.
Does being a mother tend to make one mushy?
I would think that mothers have to open up to their children,
And that would tend to melt the ice cube.
Joko.
Being a mother can be excellent training.
Still,
I've known mothers who were pretty good ice cubes,
Including myself at one time.
Melting Ice Cubes.
From Charlotte Joko Becks,
Nothing Special,
Living in Zen.
