There’s an old Chinese story about a farmer.
One night, one of his horses runs away from the farm.
The neighbours sympathise with his bad luck.
The farmer says “Good or bad, hard to say”.
A few days later the horse comes back leading a herd of wild horses.
The neighbours comment on how lucky this is.
The farmer just says “Good or bad, hard to say”.
The farmer’s son picks the finest horse out of the herd to break in.
But the horse throws him off and the son breaks his leg.
The neighbours shake their heads in sorrow at the bad news.
The farmer says “Good or bad, hard to say”.
Later, the army come past, there is a war and they are looking for recruits.
When they see the famer’s son’s leg is broken they realise he is no use to them.
They ride on without him.
The neighbours all comment on what a stroke of good fortune this is.
The famer simply replies “Good or bad, hard to say”.
The story sounds simplistic, but it makes a profound point.
Events in themselves are neither good or bad, they just are.
Any value is contributed by the human mind.
This is the basis of enlightenment, because realising it is a Copernican shift.
What do we mean by a ‘Copernican’ shift?
Nicolaus Copernicus was a Polish mathematician and astronomer, born in 1473.
According to Hollywood, Columbus was the first person to realise the world was round.
This isn’t true of course, ever since the Greeks we’ve known the world was round.
But we thought it was the centre of the universe, and the planets rotated around us.
In 1543, Copernicus published the first book to turn that inside out.
He taught that the sun was actually at the centre, and the earth rotated around the sun.
This was the Copernican shift.
From believing everything rotated around you, to realising you rotated around the sun.
It was, in effect, turning belief and experience inside out.
What we now call cognitive dissonance.
And that’s what we mean by a Copernican shift, turning thinking inside out.
And that is what enlightenment does, what the little story above hints at.
Despite the fact that we experience things as good or bad, everything exists merely as an event, neither good nor bad.
Viewed from one side it’s bad, viewed from the other side it’s good, but the event itself doesn’t change, it simply is.
All that changes is the perspective the event is viewed from.
The mind provides the perspective, which it then experiences as the truth.
Is fire good or bad, is a knife good or bad, is money good or bad, is meat good or bad, is speed good or bad, is death good or bad?
The answer is what the answer always is: it depends.
It depends on perspective, which is another name for mind.
We don’t live in reality, we live in what the mind creates from reality.
That’s what Buddha meant by “All there is, is mind.”
If we don’t understand that how can we possibly communicate?
To begin to understand that is the beginning of being able to communicate.
Because unless we understand and accept the difficulties, and the differences, we’ll carry on living in our own little world.
Talking to ourselves and wondering why no one is listening or understanding.
Just the way we do at present.
How Dave Trott helped me with my Copernican shift:
http://uk.united-pc.eu/books/fiction.html
Dear Dave,
I have read your blogs religiously for many years, I have read your books and seen all ( I think!) of your youtube etc presentations.
This most recent blog, for me, is the most seminal and Cathartic work that you have written or spoken.
Thankyou
Thanks a lot Simon, I wasn’t sure if it was too heavy for the blog.
But now you’ve said that I’m glad I put it up
It’s VERY true Dave.
Just recently we managed to scrape enough money together to go to Bali for a holiday. The Marriott hotel was on a complex with 25 others. It was heaven. In fact the breakfast was so good I had a massive British breakfast every morning and didnt have to eat for the rest of the day. The staff were so nice everything else paled into insignificance. We had to force ourselves to go to the beach or go for walk after breakfast. Walking around the vast complex we arrived at “The Bali Collection”, a classically expensive tourist trap (not the real world”. With my wife being Russian, there is absolutely no room for illusion. She wanted us to find the local supermarket and see how the locals got on, so I grudgingly walked through Monsoons day and night to find the place.
Later, I got on my bike and went for a ride ‘outside for 2 hours to find Nua Dusa Beach Grill only to find it was a stone’s throw from the hotel. The lovely staff had given me a Google map that took me on a 20 mile tour of the island. What did I find? Torrential rain so heavy and deep I cycled through a puddle ‘that vast’ both feet got completely soaked and I couldn’t raise them up or I’d stop and fall in the dirty water. Gutters that turned into storm drains. A moped in front of me broke down. I passed the laughing locals as they saw the foreigner get soaked. It was funny! Then the hills. You don’t get hills in a car. They are just an illusion. I had to get off the bike and walk. (Not so young now-yet another illusion smashed). At the top of the hill I met a woman approaching me with (i’m not kidding you) a six foot tree log on her head, smiling and saying ‘Good morning’. Then I found some cattle and a man with a machete cutting mangroves, then a bunch of unemployed men having a smoke and a cup of coffee under a communal shelter.
What did I learn? Good Morning Bali. Good Afternoon Vietnam,and of course, I was talking to myself all of the way, thinking WTF did I come all the way out here for? To get soaking wet and meet a woman with a log on her head? Answer. To remain connected with reality. This is what online has both stolen and reinforced. It has stolen reality and replaced it with distrust fake news and fantasy and it has reinforced our desire to tell the truth and remain real. So when I say thank you for all your encouragement, I mean just that. To paraphrase your words ‘No more, no less’ because trust is something solid, whereas holidays in paradise are just bubbles that eventually burst just like the one we are all living in right now, and the sooner everyone gets their head round that, the better shape they will all be in to survive the massive chunk of reality that is coming our way.
A friend once said to me, “Kevin, what do you do if you see an express train hurtling towards you?” I replied: “Dunno” expecting some clever-dick answer. He said, “Move out of the way.” Another one told me: “If you jump in front of a railway train, which carriage kills you?” “Dunno” Enlighten me!” He replied: “The first one.” I’m a lazy bugger on holiday, but my curiosity always invites me to not have contempt prior to investigation, and that I believe is message you are delivering, and it’s a hugely important one. Left to my own devices, I would never have finished the book, but with important kicks up the arse from various people I respect, I felt I had a sense of duty to complete it.
Shakesphere hit the nail on the head when he wrote “nothing is either good not bad, but thinking make it so.”