The Zen archer does not look,
but sends his arrow straight. There is no crookedness. “Crookedness” is
deceit, lying to oneself or to others, pretending. But if as normal conditioned
human beings we have a “splintered personality”, how can we be straightforward?
Well, we have to study our “personality” and relate it to Enneagrams or other
self-help parameters and see all the different aspects of ourselves that we
carry around. When we learn to see all the contradictory things going on in our
minds as it reacts to impressions – both self-generated (from our own thoughts)
and generated by others (words, actions and thoughts of other people), we can
stand a little more aloof from them, and practise silent presence and
self-observation. We are quite complicated inside our little heads. So
inadvertently we often lie, or avoid the truth. As Freddy Mercury sang, we are
the Great Pretenders. It is so difficult to be straightforward, and even
Socrates was stated to argue (Republic, Part I, to Cephalus) “...it would not be right... to tell the strict truth to a madman.” And who knows the truth anyway? It is something
that the Mullah Nasrudin said he “has never said, nor would he!”. Simply because
it isn’t “sayable”. What is conveyable is what we can say to be kind and gentle
to others, helpful, pleasing and courteous. What this Virtue and others tell us
is that speaking unkindly, discourteously and unpleasantly is not only bad for
the hearer; it is bad for our own minds. We have to decide to suppress the
taint in our lower nature – the taint of thousands of years of violence, crime,
wars, killing, madness, belief systems, creeds and dogmas; the stain of
centuries of anger, jealousy, envy and resentment; the toxic waste of modern
day society that we have been taught since childhood and haven’t analysed yet.
This we have to do first before anything deeper can happen. And so,
tired of wandering without a course, we decide to take up the compass of
Straightforwardness and try to practise this Virtue as best we understand it
today. What will happen tomorrow we do not yet know. The gurus will tell us:
“no separation, you and the universe are one”; but we have to find this out for
ourselves, inside ourselves, for it to be true for us…
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