Who does the injury?

Some things are so effortless. When I think about it, I have a nice image of it - a sailboat. When a sailboat has a decent wind in its sail, it glides along so effortlessly that the skipper and other boatmen has nothing to do but steer. The skipper makes no effort; he doesn't push the boat.

Same image should apply when we want to change something - it actually only happens when change comes about through awareness, through understanding. It feels as we are sailing....

I was going through some of my old notes and I found some quotations that go well with what I've been saying above.

"There is nothing so cruel as nature. In the whole universe there is no escape from it, and yet it is not nature that does the injury, but the person's own heart". Does this make sense? It isn't nature that does the injury but the person's own heart.

There is a story of Alma, who fell of the tree and got a good bump. They asked: "Did the fall hurt you, Alma?" And she said, "No, it was the stop that hurt, not the fall". When you cut water, the water doesn't get hurt; when you cut something solid, it breaks.

We've got solid attitudes inside us; we've got solid illusions inside us; that's what bumps against nature, that's where we get hurt, that's where the pain comes from.

This story comes from an Oriental sage, and I don't know which one. It really doesn't matter who is the author. What is said is what matters.

"If the eye is unobstructed, it results in sight; if the ear is unobstructed, the result is hearing; if the nose is unobstructed, the result is a sense of smell; if the mouth is unobstructed, the result is a sense of taste; if the mind is unobstructed, the result is wisdom".

Wisdom occurs when we drop barriers we have erected through our concepts and conditioning. Wisdom is not something acquired; wisdom is not experience; wisdom is not applying yesterday's illusions to today's problems. As somebody said to me while I was studying for my degree: "Frequently, in the life of an architect, thirty years' experience is one year's experience repeated thirty times".

You get the same solutions to fall back on: This is the way how to deal with the alcoholic; this is the way to deal with homeless; this is the way to deal with children; this is the way to deal with a divorcée. But that is not wisdom.

Wisdom is to be sensitive to this situation, to this person, uninfluenced by any carryover from the past, without residue from the experience of the past. This is quite unlike what most people are accustomed to thinking. I would add another sentence to the ones I've read: "If the heart is unobstructed, the result is love".

And this is another dimension. There is nothing that can be said, really about love. We can only speak of nonlove. We can only speak of addictions. But of love itself nothing may be said explicitly.