https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=Ws5nFR7fTAs
So the first thing you see here is that this is the tree This is the tree of life And so it echoes the tree of the knowledge of good and evil But this is post fall So we interpreted the story of Adam and Eve already It’s that human beings became self-conscious They discovered death, they discovered morality It was all a consequence of interacting with the fruit and the snake, something like that And you can read that as an evolutionary tale You can at least read it as a representation of the emergence of self-consciousness in human beings And so what does that mean? Well it means that the apple, in some sense, was equivalent to death And that’s what you see here, you see Eve is picking fruit from the tree here But the fruit is, it’s on the skull side of the tree And so Eve, it’s the vulnerability of Eve She’s naked there and displayed to the world It’s the vulnerability of Eve, that’s one way of thinking about it It was the vulnerability of Eve that was the catalyst to the development of human self-consciousness And I think that that’s true, it seems to be a reasonable proposition And so Eve’s relationship with the fruit and the snake doomed human beings to the realization of mortality That’s what this side of the picture represents And so it’s a catastrophe, and it’s associated here with the snake and the fruit It’s human beings’ attempts to understand how it is that they emerged into a self-conscious world Okay, so fine, so this is on the fall end of the story And this is on the solution end of the story Now what you see here, there’s a skull there and there’s a crucifix here And you see there’s all these little fruits on this tree So it’s the apple of death that Eve is handing out on this side And it’s the host that plays a role in the cannibalistic rite that’s at the center of Christian ritual That Mary, as the church, is handing out as a medication for this So she’s handing out the antidote Well, what’s the antidote? Well, it’s a strange thing, it’s associated with this crucifix And that’s translated into this wheat and host, so you’re supposed to eat that And that is the incorporation of whatever this represents Well, the question then is, what does that represent? It’s a symbol of suffering, obviously It’s a symbol of the ultimate in suffering It’s the weirdest thing, because the picture proposes that To ingest the ultimate in suffering is to simultaneously ingest the antidote To the catastrophe of the knowledge of death It’s a very strange paradox But it’s the proper paradox that’s at the center of the great drama that’s represented by this picture A little knowledge of death destroys you Full voluntary acceptance of it is the cure That’s the idea Well, that’s a hell of an idea It’s not only to… and to accept it Is simultaneously, in some sense, to take responsibility for it Because you don’t take responsibility for things that you don’t accept You only take responsibility for things that you do accept You say, well, the world is fundamentally flawed because Its fundamental nature is Intolerable vulnerability I’m not going to take any responsibility for that That’s really Kane’s attitude in the story of Kane and Abel He externalizes responsibility for the catastrophe of his life And therefore he doesn’t make the right sacrifices And so the paradoxical injunction here is Accept responsibility for the catastrophe of your life And that way you transcend it Simultaneously And there’s an unbelievably hopeful message in there And the message is, you’re actually strong enough to do that You know that you’re strong enough to do that And you’re not going to be able to do that You’re actually strong enough to do that You just don’t know it And you won’t find out until you do it You can’t find out until you do it But if you did it, you’d find out that it was true It’s a massive risk It’s the ultimate in risks, right? You have to be willing to lose your life in order to find it It’s like, exactly right So that picture, when I started to understand that picture Well, every time I look at it, it just blows me away I can’t… it’s unbelievably It’s an unbelievably sophisticated set of ideas But I don’t think it’s much different, really Than this idea I mean, Buddha finds his enlightenment under a tree It’s not fluke that that’s the case That’s his natural environment And he’s sitting in the lotus here The lotus opens up This thing that springs up from the depths And he sits there illuminated the same way He’s got a halo that’s the sun That stands for higher consciousness And he’s transcended by accepting the fact that life is suffering He’s transcended the limitations that are part of mortality You see that symbol there? That swastika, you see it there It’s reversed The Nazis reversed it Well, think about that I mean, they weren’t stupid Their symbols had meaning Is what the swastika represented Was what this represents Reversed Well, that’s a very bad idea This is the thing that this idea is What enables people to transcend their suffering And Buddha said, well, don’t be too attached to things And what does that mean? It doesn’t mean deny the world It might mean deny the world if you’re too in love with the material Like, with material well-being, let’s say Then your pathway to transcendence and meaning might be to abandon that Because it’s constraining you It’s making you less than you could ever imagine It’s constraining you It’s making you less than you could be But the fundamental lesson, the more fundamental lesson that’s underneath that Is don’t let what you are stop you from being what you could be Right And so then the question is, well, what do you identify with? Do you identify with what you are? Then you’re a tyrant Do you identify with chaos? Because that’s the opposite of order, say Then you’re nihilistic Well, you don’t identify with either of those You know that they’re both necessary You know that you have to live with both of them But you identify with the capacity to continually transcend what you are And then you seek out error That’s what humility is It’s like, I’m error-ridden So I want to see I want to put myself in a situation where I can discover one of my errors Hopefully not in a way that’s going to knock me completely out of the game, right? I want to seek out a challenge I want to find out where my limits are I want to find out where there’s not enough of me yet And I want to do that in a way that’s engaging Because you can wear yourself out fighting dragons Obviously you can exhaust yourself completely And that’s not helpful You know, one of the things I learned, for example, when I was coaching lawyers These were people who had very high-end careers And so they had an infinite workload No matter how much they worked Flat out, there was always way more work that they had to do It’s a very difficult thing to learn to manage And so they were exhausting themselves And I said, well, you know, you have to work less per day It’s like, well, no, that’s not happening I can’t do that And so what I learned over time was Okay, so this is what you have to do Every three months you have to block off four days And go have a vacation And you have to plan that in advance So it’s in your calendar So that your secretary doesn’t book your time And then you need that because you have to recuperate enough So that you can work less per day And you have to recuperate enough so that you can work as hard as you’re going to work And of course, they were nervous about that And I said, well, look, we can calibrate this Let’s keep track of your billable hours over the next year And see if they increase or decrease Because I bet you if you take more time off You’ll actually have more billable hours You’ll actually have your cake and eat it too You’ll get to have a vacation And you’ll be more productive And that inevitably that was what happened And so that’s a matter of calibrating the game properly, right? You want to play a game that you can play today But also one that you can play next week and next month We’re not talking about, you know, your career this week We’re talking about you having a career that lasts 30 years That doesn’t kill you That doesn’t make you hate yourself or the job That doesn’t make you bitter That doesn’t wear you to a frazzle So it has to be optimized And so I think that you can, in fact, decide to take on the load That’s optimally meaningful if you want And then you get to have your cake and eat it too You’re on the pathway to continual incremental improvement You only have to burn off a feather at a time Instead of having the whole bloody thing burst into flames But it’s a constant source of renewal And there’s an idea that to be renewed You have to drink the water of life, right? That’s an old mythological idea And what’s the water? The water of life chaos is water Water is chaos Water is what washes away too much order And to stay continually, let’s say, refreshed by the water of life Is to take on exactly the right amount of chaos To make sure that your garden is properly nourished And I think meaning is actually the marker of that And as I said, you know that I wouldn’t consider myself Either naive or particularly optimistic person I don’t think I’m either of those But this is actually an idea This is one of the only ideas that I’ve ever found That I really believe to be rock solid I actually think that it’s true And it’s very optimistic Because it says you can use your sense of meaning To calibrate your progress through life But there’s rules You have to aim at the highest possible good That you can conceive And that’s subject update Because what the hell do you know? But you start by aiming at the star you can see Rather than the dimmer one that you can’t yet perceive And then you decide that you’re going to do that honestly, right? That’s a big decision So the first decision I think in some sense is a decision of love You’re going to decide that being is worthwhile And that you’re going to work for its betterment And that’s a decision that’s based on love And the second decision is based on truth Having made that decision, you’re going to play a straight game Having made those two decisions, I think that you can allow Your sense of meaning to calibrate your pathway And then what’s so interesting is that you hit a state That’s as close to paradisal as you’re going to hit right away Because being engaged like that It’s better to be engaged in the solution of a complex problem Than not to have a problem at all And that’s no different than saying It’s better for there to be being than non-being Because being is a problem And so if you want to have no problems, then you have no being And you could say, well, being is so miserable That maybe that’s the route we should take And fair enough, but maybe you can have your cake and eat it too You can have the damn problem It can be a problem worth solving And you can be so engaged in solving the problem That it justifies the fact that the problem exists And then you get to have the problem and the solution at the same time And maybe that’s better than not having the problem at all And I believe that