Later, Alligator by Robbin Hayman

There is a Danish saying that a dear child has many names. So it is with language, which we cherish as essential to our humanity. Thoughts, concepts, labels, ideas, theories, descriptions, definitions, judgments, strategies, interpretations, stories—all of these express and reinforce our love of abstraction.

One of the great teachers of non-duality, the 9th-century Chinese Zen master Huang Po, continually cautioned against attachment to concepts and the belief that they can convey truth—all the while using words and definitions to do so! Clearly we need concepts on our journey to freedom. But we must learn to treat them with the utmost caution.

Enter Bond—James Bond. In Live and Let Die, Bond (Roger Moore) is taken prisoner by villains with a crocodile farm in the Florida swamps. They sail him out to an island and leave him there, certain that he cannot escape without being eaten. Not so for our hero. At precisely the right moment, when the crocodiles are suitably aligned, he tiptoes deftly across their backs to the mainland and escapes. This is how we must use language and concepts. If we linger too long on any given pointer, we are lunch!

My own experience with inquiry has proven this so. If I dwell on any one answer, it consumes me. For example, I might be going about my day when the thought arises, “I should be clearer than this.” So I’ll counter with “Who said that?” The character duly responds, usually with some emotional side dish, “Somebody with a sense of Robbin.” This “Robbin” pauses and thinks, “Well, that sounds reasonable; it does feel like that.” But if I stop right there, then I’m conned again! I’m resting on just another concept of “somebody.” I have learned that I must keep going until the answers run out. So I might then ask, “Who has this sense of Robbin?” and so forth, nimbly and persistently, until no one, no thing, no description remains.

Thus we can progressively step away from the island of self until we reach the far shore, that place of extraordinary, ordinary spaciousness. The concepts swirl away behind us, hardly aware of our light, fleeting touch. We need our cherished words, thoughts, ideas. But we must be ever cautious of their power to consume us. Love not the concepts themselves, but where they can take us: beyond the waves, beyond the words, beyond ourselves.

Robbin Hayman is enrolled in The Living Method Continuing Student Program. He lives in Denmark.