02/06/2023
Yet the unexpected psychological fact is that man cannot control himself unless he accepts himself. In other words, before he can change his course of action he must first be sincere, going with and not against his nature, even when the immediate trend of his nature is toward evil, toward a fall. The same is true in sailing a boat, for when you want to sail against the direction of the wind, you do not invite conflict by turning straight into the wind. You tack against it, keeping the wind in your sails. So, also, in order to recover himself the automobile driver must turn in the direction of a skid.
Our problem is that our long indoctrination in dualistic thinking has made it a matter of common sense that we can control our nature only by going against it. But this is the same false common sense which urges the driverto turn against the skid. To maintain control we have to learn new reactions, just as in the art of judo one must learn not to resist a fall or an attack but to control it by swinging with it. Now judo is a direct application to wrestling of the Zen and Taoist philosophy of wu-wei, of not asserting oneself against nature, of not being in frontal opposition to the direction of things. The objective of the Zen way of life is the experience of awakening or enlightenment (insight, we should say in current psychological jargon), in which man escapes from the paralysis, the double-bind, in which the dualistic idea of self-control and self-consciousness involves him. In this experience man overcomes his feeling of dividedness or separateness—not only from himself as the higher controlling self against the lower controlled self, but also from the total universe of other people and things. The interest of Zen is that it provides a uniquely simple and classic example of a way of recognizing and dissolving the conflict or contradiction of self-consciousness.
Alan Watts ~ This Is It.
