This idea of seeing things clearly, as they really are, and of seeing that things are perfect the way they are can be easily confused. Obviously, in the context of the way we currently live and understand our lives, there are things that warrant change. The thing to recognize is that anything that warrants such “social change” is a product and result of human ignorance, of not seeing things as they really are. The only real change, in terms of us, comes with awakening to the reality and truth of things and living thusly; otherwise it’s just the same delusions and the same consequences over and over again, the same actors in different costumes.
But, in fact, reality is that everything changes and is always constantly changing every moment (and, in truth, there is no such thing as a “moment” at all in a reality of process); so to think that someone who teaches that things are “perfect the way they are”—as one might read or hear from Buddhist teachers—is saying that if certain people are being oppressed, that since that is the way it is then it is good and perfect is to miss the point. Every moment is a moment of change, whether it is something we “see” with our eyes or not. So, as every moment is a moment of change, we have the ability to change “the way things are,” now, now, now, now, now.
Do we really understand the difference between something changing and our understanding, our perception, of it changing? Do we really understand the difference?
This is partially about mistaking the way things are for the way we perceive them to be, and partially about not understanding what we mean by “the way things are.” We must first and foremost understand that seeing reality, the way things really are, is to see that reality is a process, not something stagnant and set, and so not really something we can see at all.
Thus, it is not whether things should or should not change—that question is moot. Things do change, always. The question is of whether to see that reality and accept it and live it.
Something in its “perfect” natural state is neither “good” nor “bad”—it simply is. It is we who freeze reality in moments and images and put things in boxes and cages of conceptual frameworks in order to understand them and judge them.
Things are never “the same,” it only seems to us that they are the same because of our particular perspective. It is we (humans) who judge things and label them good or bad, imposing upon them our own mores and belief systems. In addition, those lazy cynics who use their ignorant ideas of determinism as an excuse for laziness and selfishness must recognize that there is no such thing as doing nothing; we are always doing something, as well as the fact that the “situation” they look at and put on the table for discussion is not really so easily caged and tamed as they might want to think it is.
So, yet again, everything comes down to perspective when one talks about concepts, ideas and such, for they all must exist in a framework, a context. Things other than our own illusions exist outside of our contexts; it is we who need our contexts in order to see them and understand them and process them for our own experience of them, but that has nothing to do with the thing itself, only us.
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From my personal notes, 9/7/99.
