James Wood Teachings

From a talk given by James in 2008

I want to talk about sanity. Somehow I feel more sane when I don’t talk about it. The silence feels really good.

I was editing some talks from the summer and I remember that someone brought up something about doing this work and having a sense of fear of letting go of the known, a sense of falling or letting go that feels like a loss, like you’re losing your mind.

It can feel that way. What really happens is you don’t lose your mind. Awakening is losing the mind’s ability to control you.

I think of Dick Cheney for some reason, someone like the big fat cat in the corner with a cigar. Maybe he’s a mob boss. That’s the old picture: the quiet guy sitting in the back, running the show. His back is never to the door. It’s a man, too.

It’s one thing to have Dick Cheney running an administration that’s affecting your life, or informing the logic of your existence. It’s another thing to have the same guy voted out of office; he’s not in a position to tell you what to do.

So you haven’t lost Dick Cheney, you’ve lost really a form of hypnotism that says we have to listen to the guy in the first place, or that we should. Someone in a position of power who tells you how it is.

So we’re taught that the mind is our source of everything, that it’s the world we know. And doing this work is about letting go of the attachment we have to the mind, and therefore to the world, that says that the world is our authority, the world tells us who we are. And if it tells you who you are, it’s definitely telling you what to do. Even if you feel that you’re free, if who you think you are is an object of the mind, you’re shoved around within the logic of that messy framework.

So what happens is you let go. When you let go, a fear can arise. The basic fear is who could I possibly be without that? Scared. The mind doesn’t go anywhere any more than Dick Cheney (or some other politician) ceases to exist when he’s voted out of office. He’s still there, he just doesn’t matter anymore. There he goes! Here he comes, there he goes. So the thoughts that pass through your mind just come and go and they don’t tell you who you are anymore.

It’s like your whole life you’re clinging to the side of a cliff, hanging over an abyss, and you’re afraid of falling, of letting go. Not only is there no way to know what that is when that letting go happens ― a complete letting go into awakening itself ― there is no way to know what in some sense awaits you. It awaits Itself. What you’re letting go is “you.”

But let me tell you: when you let go, it’s like you’re suspended about one nanometer above solid rock the entire time. And it’s even more solid ― less risky ― than that. But the mind wants to tell you that you are something that needs to be held onto. And when you let go, the sense of self, just like the politician, is still there, you’ve just voted him out of office. It’s no longer a problem.

It’s all about meeting the tendency to want to hold on, to contract, to attach. There are many different ways to look at that phenomenon. That’s what I call the ego. The ego is really a tendency to grasp. But fundamentally, it’s a grasping at the root of all grasping that tells me who I am in a sense that’s false and is in itself a form of suffering.

Last time, I said that suffering can be and often is a sense that things are incomplete, a sense of is this all there is? ― boredom, ennui. That might seem tolerable. But if you look at it carefully, you’ll see that that suffering or incompleteness, dukkha, is like a cancerous web that’s attached to every form of hideous torture and abuse, genocide, the whole gamut, the worst possible kinds of pain. It’s all part of the same thing.

So sometimes the nightmare seems a bit less horrible, and we kind of get through it. That may sound depressing, but it’s a fact. It is my experience. Because it still is that, it still has that nature, just like a corrupt or evil politician has that nature, but when that logic is no longer running your life, it’s not a problem.

So I started with talking about sanity. Letting go of everything that you know can feel crazy, can feel scary. I’m here to tell you it’s really okay. It really is okay. The way we do this work ― the reason I’m allowing it to unfold gradually, for example ― is to honor the process of growth of consciousness in such a way that it’s not destabilizing to a point that would be unhealthy or counterproductive.

And sanity is not anything you can grab, grasp, hold, keep, possess, attach to, or own. I definitely advocate developing the mind so that it’s healthy and balanced. So a healthy intellect is a good thing. I almost want to say throw it away. Just develop it and throw it away. Because you don’t lose it. You don’t lose it. It’s just put in its proper place. It becomes a tool, like a fine instrument.

It’s just extremely insidious the way it tries to tell you ― the intellect will try to tell you ― that you can understand, really grasp what I’m saying, for example. The kind of understanding that is merely mental grasping is not helpful. What’s helpful is the kind of understanding that produces insight. The ideas themselves are not valuable any more than a raft that you’ve used to cross a river is valuable once you’ve crossed. But the crossing is valuable.

For example, consider the word “God.” I like the word “Truth” because it’s less likely to be abused. But when we use the word “God” ― most people would think they know what that means, or have an image or idea, a sensation. It is nothing that you can mentally comprehend.

So if you can use what I’m saying, that’s what this is really about. I’ve talked about this: there’s the level of the words, and then there’s a deeper Stillness. So you’re taking in the information and listening into that depth at the same time. In the same way as when you’re sitting in meditation, you’re allowing the breath and also watching thoughts and sensations. There’s a depth of attention that doesn’t analyze. A listening. A paying attention.

So if you can, trust me when I say that that letting go means the cycle of birth and death doesn’t arise for you anymore. That’s what awakening is. It effectively ends that. And yet it’s like a rebirth. You’ve probably heard the term “born again.” It’s like being born again except it has no form, it has no name, it has no graspable quality.

And letting go ― it’s like falling off a cliff and then you fall two microns or something and then you didn’t really fall at all. All of a sudden, all of the fear you had ― your entire identity was this cringing, grasping effort ― when you let go, all of that is just gone. And sanity is what I sometimes call Wisdom. It’s a spontaneous movement of your own Being that is similar to rafting down a river, something where you’re not doing anything, really. And it just flows. Any obstacles it encounters, it just has its own kind of way, and practically speaking, that kind of movement may be speech or physical movement. It’s sane because it is complete already ― as complete as finding yourself after letting go. You’re standing there, and all of a sudden there’s this realization that you’re free, and in some sense you do what you feel like doing, and it’s not a problem. There’s no more of the grasping, holding, clawing survival stuff.