A Method Is For The Thing One Can Live Without

If you quietly examine the world you will see that all of humanity is in a state of Trying.

A person is Here. And he is trying to get There.

Because the human mind has been conditioned thus for millennia, such a thing is part of the furniture, so to speak.

And because everyone is Here, and trying to get There, this gives birth to a gargantuan industry that offers “methods” of getting There.

A man who enjoys his money and seeks to make it multiply will invest it or hire a financial advisor and be more “aggressive” with his investments.

But the man who is in his twilight years will become more “conservative” with his investments. He will put them in bonds.

And the man who is so in love with his money that he cannot stand to part with it, what will he do?

He will put his money under his mattress.

A man who enjoys the idea of enlightenment will consult with gurus, ascetics, scriptures. He will spend his life following their prescribed methods.

But the man who must have enlightenment does not spend his life in this way.

If we examine the story of Siddhartha Gautama before he became the Buddha, he followed the prescribed methods of the ascetics for 7 years. Hours upon hours of meditation, starving the body, self-mutilation, chanting . . .

What did he get from this?

An emaciated body, matted hair, and extreme hunger.

Then he left.

But the ascetics stayed. And they chastised him for leaving them.

Why did he leave?

He left for the same reason that the money-loving man places his cash under his mattress.

He could not risk failure.

This does not mean that they were not willing to fail along the way.

But the ultimate prize was so non-negotiable, they could not afford to surrender it to a “method.”

If one imagines anything in his life, the things he values most are the things he does not allow himself to risk losing.

The things he may like, but can ultimately afford to live without, are the thing he subjects to a method.

You may trust a stranger to cut your lawn.

But will you trust a stranger to watch your newborn for the night?

The reason that the “prescription industry” and the “method industry” is such a large industry is because there is no shortage of things that human beings are unserious about.

Why does the unserious man seek a method, while the serious man does not?

Because one can afford to fail, and the other cannot.

The thing that is life-and-death for a human being is something he would never in a million years seek by way of an algorithm, a technique, or a “five-step plan.”

When ultimate failure simply is not acceptable, a man takes matters into his own hands. He oversees every inch of the journey.

And relegates nothing to anyone.

Those who seek methods do so in order to appease themselves that they are “addressing the issue,” while gaining the secret satisfaction of avoiding it altogether.

If methods were effective, there would not be a new one invented every day.

If there were a million methods to becoming enlightened, then there would be at least a million Buddhas. For one would imagine that one method would at least work for a single individual.

In every industry, in every discipline, in every nation, the pattern is the same.

The method says, “If you do this, then I promise that you will get that.”

When the person does not get “that,” he returns to the prescription-giver.

At which time he is told, “The reason that you did not get that is because you did not do it correctly.”

The person then spends another twenty years trying to do it “correctly.”

When, still, he does not get that, he returns to the prescription-giver.

The prescription-giver, secretly having realized the inevitable failure of his method, then uses his ace-in-the-hole. He says, “Oh ye of little faith. Do you think that these things happen overnight? You must have patience. If you keep at it, and if it is meant to be, one day it will come.”

The person’s mind then berates him, “You are so impatient. What must the prescription-giver be thinking of you right now? All you do is demand and demand. Do you think you are the only one trying to get this? Others are working hard too. It’s okay, take your time, keep at it, have a little faith.”

And this is the way it has gone since the dawn of civilization.

A method makes one subservient to the method.

The question of “getting there” is replaced by “getting the method right.”

Then the gurus and the spiritual community become increasingly clever.

They say, “Don’t do anything. Just be.”

And this enslaves the person to a far greater degree.

For at least when he was working on a method, he knew it was a method.

But in being told to “just be,” he now begins to work on “just be-ing.”

First he was working on “method-ing.”

Now he is working on “non-method-ing.”

It will not be long before he begins to ask, “How do I just be?”

And the clever guru will tell him, “Just forget about everything. Let it go. Relax.”

The person will then begin to work on “Trying to forget. Trying to let go. And trying to relax.”

Decades will pass. And when he still has not arrived anywhere, he will return to the guru and ask, “How do I relax?”

The guru will then give him methods for relaxation.

And the cycle will begin again.

And when he reaches the end of his life, the man will say, “I did not achieve what I wanted to achieve. But at least I gave it my best shot.”

And then he will die.

With the vague satisfaction of having made failed lifelong efforts at trying to arrive at the place, that he was not truly serious about at all.

Namaste.