‘Finding the still point’ by Joseph Campbell

The Bodhisattva Manjushri is shown with a sword known as “the sword of discrimination.” Discrimination has to do with discriminating between the mortal and the eternal. The mortal is that which you see. When you see yourself in the mirror, that is the mortal. The eternal is that which you are. So, discriminating in your life between the eternal and the mortal is the essence of this figure. The sword is usually a benevolent instrument which clears the way.

When you are desiring things and fearing things, that’s mortality. The three temptations of the Buddha, desire, fear, and duty- are what hold you in the field of time. When you put the hermetic seal around yourself and, by discriminating between the mortal and the enduring, you find that still place within yourself that does not change, that’s when you’ve achieved nirvana. That still point is the firmly burning flame that is not rippled by any wind. When you find that burning flame within yourself, action becomes facilitated in athletics, in playing a musical piece on the piano, or in performance of any kind. If you can hold to that still place within yourself while engaged in the field, your performance will be masterly. That’s what the Samurai does. And the real athlete.

Watch a professional marathon runner: he is not concerned with his showing the way to somebody who is running his first race is. You win, you lose, you run the race. The race is what counts, not the winning or the losing. Running the marathon is itself the event. Everybody wins. Whether you win or place is a secondary matter. This is participation without engagement. But if you lose that still point, you are all in the world. If, for example, you go into the race as a front runner, thinking you are going to have to win, and you are concerned that you don’t quite have the capacity to do so, then you won’t be participating in the marathon. Nietzsche says one must act with only three-quarters of one’s power. That’s the discrimination.

Anything you do has a still point.
When you are in that still point,
you can perform maximally.

Where are you between two thoughts? If you identify yourself with certain actions, certain achievements and failures, those are thoughts. That’s you in the field of time and experience. Where are you otherwise? If it weren’t difficult to get to that still point, there wouldn’t have to be so much talk about it and all this sitting in postures trying to get there. And then, when you get up from the posture, you are right back where you were. So, you go back to the posture to see if you can get there again. It’s not easy; yet, it’s very easy. It’s like riding a bicycle: you keep falling off until you know how to ride, and then you can’t fall off. It’s a perspective problem. Running through the field of time is this energy which is the one energy that is putting itself into all these forms. By identifying with that one energy, you are at the same time identified with the forms coming and going. If you see the two modes–involvement and the still point within you, samsara and nirvana–as separate from each other, you are in a dualistic position. But when you realize that the two are one, you can hold to your still point while engaging: It’s the same world experienced in two different ways. You can experience both ways at once.

Sri Ramkrishna was devoted to the Goddess Kali. Kali, the word means “black” and also “Time,” is that black abyss of mystery out of which all things come and back into which they go. That’s Kali. Her principle image is that of dancing in the burning ground,the place where corpses are burned. This is dissolution. She is dancing on the body of her god, Shiva, her husband.

Your god is the final obstacle to get past. Any idea, any concept, any name, is a final obstacle.

The one preached in the church in any religion is the final obstacle. The only Western teacher I have found who gets it is Meister Eckhart, who says, “The ultimate leave-taking is the leaving of God for God.” All of our religions hang onto the image. None has gone past its god. The still point is going past the god. Goethe says, “Everything temporal is but a symbol.” Nietzsche says, “Everything eternal is but a metaphor.” They are saying the same thing. “Everything’ includes God, heaven, hell, the whole works. So as long as you are living to get to heaven, you won’t find that still place. One has to go beyond the pairs of opposites to find the real source.

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From The Joseph Campbell Companion by Joseph Campbell