Alongside AI: Jolt

"Let's say we take as the basic supposition —which is the thing that one sees in the experience of satori or awakening, or whatever you want to call it —that this now moment in which I'm talking and you're listening, is eternity. 

"That although we have somehow conned ourselves into the notion that this moment is ordinary, and that we may not feel very well, we're sort of vaguely frustrated and worried and so on, and that it ought to be changed. 

"This is it. 

"So you don't need to do anything at all. But the difficulty about explaining that is that you mustn't try and not do anything, because that's doing something.

   

"It's just the way it is. 

"In other words, what's required is a sort of act of super relaxation; it's not ordinary relaxation. It's not just letting go, as when you lie down on the floor and imagine that you're heavy so you get into a state of muscular relaxation. It's not like that. It's being with yourself as you are without altering anything. And how to explain that? Because there's nothing to explain. 

"It is the way it is now. 

"See? And if you understand that, it will automatically wake you up. So that's why Zen teachers use shock treatment, to sometimes hit them or shout at them or create a sudden surprise. Because it is that jolt that suddenly brings you here. 

"See, there's no road to here, because you're already there. 

"If you ask me, 'How am I going to get here?' It will be like the famous story of the American tourist in England. The tourist asked some yokel the way to Upper Tuttenham, a little village. And the yokel scratched his head and he said 'Well, sir, I don't know where it is, but if I were you, I wouldn't start from here'."