The World as Just So, Part 9: Who Is the Thinker Behind the Thoughts?

What is stuff like apart from form? What is form like apart from stuff? All those problems—which have bothered people for centuries—are based on asking the question in the wrong way; on having used the wrong image for the process. Actually, since nobody ever saw a piece of shapeless stuff, and nobody ever saw a piece of stuff-less shape, the whole thing really is saying that they are the same. And there isn’t any necessity even to think of a difference between them. Even the contrasting words, ‘form’ and ‘substance,’ or ‘form’ and ‘matter,’ are a nuisance.

There is process. There is the flow of thought. The flow of thought doesn’t have to happen to anyone. Experience does not have to beat upon an experiencer. There is, all the time, simply the one stream going on, and we are convinced that we stand aside from it and observe it, because we’ve been brought up that way. But, you know, in your stream of thought and experience, I am an object, and a very fleeting and passing one. And also, in my stream of experience you, also, are people who come and go. We are all, you see, living in the same world. We think there is me, and there is an external world around me, but I am in you external world and you are in my external world, and if you think about that you see that we are all in one world going along together. There isn’t really the ‘internal’ and the ‘external,’ there is simply the process.

It’s very important to get rid of that illusion of duality between the thinker and the thought, so find out: who is the thinker behind the thoughts? Who is the real, genuine you? And so, one of the methods that is used is shouting. The Zen master would say to a student, Now, I want to hear you. I want to hear you say the word ‘moo,’ and really mean it! Because I want to hear not just the sound, but the person who says it. Now, produce—for me—that.

He goes, Moo!

And the Zen teacher says, No, no! Not yet.

Moo!!

And he says, It’s only coming from your throat. I want to hear your belly, you know?

And always, you see, it’ll never come while the person is trying to make a differentiation between a ‘true’ moo and a ‘false’ moo. To act with confidence, you just do it. But since people are not used to that, it is necessary to set up protected situations in which it can be done.

If we just—in the ordinary way of social intercourse—acted without deliberation, we would get into amazing confusions, as when people say, Always speak the truth. Never tell a white lie. And they say exactly what is true and what they think about other people. Well, they can raise a great deal of trouble. But the experience of Zen has been that there should be a kind of enclosure in which this kind of behavior can be done until the people are expert in it and know how to apply it in all situations.