Chapter 7: Let It Go

Someone has had something on his mind for months, and can’t get past it. Friends come to talk him round, and what they say is much the same:

Let it go. Look on the bright side. Let things take their course. Accept it. Stop thinking about it. It’s all over now.

Some put it more elegantly: allow everything to happen. Embrace all that is present. Don’t judge, just observe. Let it come, let it go.

There isn’t a single “I” in these sentences. Those who say them mean well, and those who hear them know they are kind words. Yet many people have had this experience: someone says “let it go,” and the heart feels even more blocked. You say “let it go” to yourself a hundred times, the thing is still there, and there is one more layer: how can I not even manage to let go?

This chapter is about the “I” hidden in these sentences that carry no “I.”

When people let go, accept, let things take their course, what are they actually doing?

Someone can’t sleep at night. He knows the more anxious he gets, the less he’ll sleep, so he tells himself: stop thinking, relax, let it take its course, if you can’t sleep, you can’t sleep. But while saying “let it take its course,” every few minutes he glances at the time on his phone: one o’clock, half past one, two. That “letting it take its course” is one that watches the clock. He is really waiting: I’ve let it take its course, so why won’t you let me sleep?

Someone takes up meditation. He sits, closes his eyes, and the voice in his earphones says: observe your breath; when a thought comes, don’t follow it, let it go. He does as he is told. A thought comes, he hurries to send it off; another comes, he sends that off too. After twenty minutes of sitting he is more tired than before he began. A voice inside him keeps asking: Am I calm yet? Am I doing it right?

Someone has been badly hurt by another person. He has read a lot of books, and knows he should accept, forgive, let go. Every day he tells himself: I accept, I forgive, I let go. He says it through gritted teeth. One day in the street he sees that person in the distance, and the fire shoots up inside, fiercer than before. At home, he can’t calm down for a long time, not because of that person but because: haven’t I already let go?

Someone says, “Whatever will be, will be.” As he says it, the corners of his mouth turn down. In that “whatever will be” there is a little resignation, a little unwillingness, a little “there’s nothing I can do about it anyway.”

And someone often says: I’ve already let it go. He says it a lot, tells everyone, says the thing no longer affects him. Said often enough, those around him can hear that it is still pressing on him.

One layer deeper are the spiritual practitioners. Practicing for many years, with a very high goal: to eliminate the small self, merge into the whole, become one with everything, no distinctions, no thoughts. Every day he works hard at it. Sometimes, sitting, he feels he is about to dissolve, and a wave of ecstasy comes; sometimes he can’t dissolve however he tries, and is dejected: the small self is still so heavy.

So many shapes, and they often have something in common: as they are said, inside “let it go” hides someone letting go, inside “accept it” hides someone accepting, inside “allow everything to happen” hides someone allowing. Letting go and accepting are sometimes real; people really do loosen. The one hiding inside is another matter.

Where does this person stand?

He stands at the door. Things happen inside the door: sadness, sleeplessness, anger, thoughts. He stands at the door watching them, then speaks: very well, I allow you in; very well, I accept you; very well, you may leave now. He holds a notebook and registers them one by one: this one let go, that one not yet; accepted well today, not well yesterday.

This is the hidden “I”: a gatekeeper, a manager, an approver. It is harder to see than the “I” that says “I,” because it never shows its face and never says “I”; it only stands at the door, saying “let it go,” “accept it.” Yet it is always there, never off duty for a moment.

Why does it go to stand at the door?

For fear of being swept away. When things come, when sadness comes, when anger comes, people feel they are about to be washed away, drowned, gone. Standing at the door seems safe: I’m not inside that thing, I’m outside watching it, managing it; however big it is, I let it in, I’m in charge.

So “allow everything to happen,” which sounds like letting go, is in fact another kind of gripping. Before, things had to go as I wanted; now even “not going as I want” has to go as I want: I allow it not to go as I want. What is managed has changed; the manager has not. He has put on nicer clothes and gone to stand at a somewhat higher door.

And he can never go off duty. One thing let go, the next one comes; this thought sent off, that one comes. Every day he stands at the door, registering, approving, sending off, without end. He wants to use managing to buy a day when he no longer has to manage; but managing can never produce “not managing.”

And that practitioner who wants to eliminate the small self. He wants the “I” to dissolve, merge into a greater whole, no distinctions, no thoughts. But who is it that “wants to dissolve”? Who is it that works hard day after day, dejected at not dissolving, ecstatic at nearly dissolving? It is exactly the “I” he wants to eliminate. It has not been eliminated; it has only found itself the most exalted job of all: eliminating itself. This job can never be finished.

The moment one asks, one has left; where the asking rests, one is.

First the first half: the moment one asks, one has left. Asking “have I let go?”, asking “am I calm?”, asking “have I accepted enough?”, asking “how can I allow everything to happen?”: the moment this asking comes out, a person shifts one step outward from what is happening and goes to stand at the door. This shift is really felt: cut off, suspended, as if you were outside the thing, the thing over there, a distance between. That feeling of being cut off, that suspended weariness, is real.

But it must be said precisely: what has left is only that feeling. A person has not really run outside being.

That gatekeeper standing at the door: where does he stand? He too is here, tonight, on this bed, in this spell of sleeplessness. His asking, his approving, his notebook, are all one time happening too, in the same place as the sleeplessness, the anger, the sound of cars outside. The doorway is inside the door too. Being has no door, so it has no doorway; people think they stand outside watching, and that “watching” is inside too. The feeling of leaving is real; leaving has never happened.

Underneath “let go” there is a deeper flaw. To let go, there must be two things: a hand and a thing. The hand is me; the thing is that matter, that sadness, that anger. But when you are sad, the sadness is you; when the anger rises, the anger is you. People can’t let it go not because their grip is too weak but because it is not a thing held in the hand at all; it is just you at this moment. How do you put yourself down? The one wanting to let go, the gatekeeper, is not another person either; in that moment of standing at the door, the one standing at the door is you too. Inside the door is you, the doorway is you too; the one holding the notebook is you, the one registered is you too. Real loosening does happen; what can’t be done is to have another, untroubled master step out and hand the trouble over: the two sides can’t be found.

Now the second half: where it rests, it is being.

When that asking rests, when that gatekeeper goes off duty, the feeling of being cut off is gone. With no doorway, there is no distance to walk back either. It is not that after resting a person returns into being; in this moment of resting, there was never that road. In the moment of asking there was no road either; only, the moment one asks, one feels cut off.

But the word “rest” is the easiest to mishear.

Hearing “where it rests, it is being,” the gatekeeper at once takes over again: right, then I must rest. I must stop asking, stop managing, stop approving. I am now starting to rest.

With this, he has gone to stand at the door again. Resting is not a task that must be accomplished. The more you order yourself to rest, the less you sometimes can; sometimes, when you stop watching for it, it comes slowly of itself, as sleepiness comes of itself, as a flare of anger settles of itself. Being able to rest is real; not being able to rest, you are never once shut outside the door.

How did that sleepless man finally get to sleep? Most likely like this: tossing about till three, with no strength left, he thought, forget it, whatever happens happens, at worst I’ll go to work tomorrow with dark circles under my eyes. He stopped looking at the clock, turned over, and heard a light rain begin outside, drops tapping on the air-conditioner unit, tap, tap, tap. Listening, at some point he didn’t notice, he fell asleep.

He did not “manage” to let go. That gatekeeper got tired and loosened its own grip.

And besides, what if it doesn’t rest? What if the asking keeps on asking, and the gatekeeper never goes off duty?

Then too, nothing has left. The night of asking is being, the night of guarding the door is being too, every minute of watching the clock is being. Resting is good; resting, a person is at ease; but resting is not the key to the door, because there was never a door. Being does not wait for people to rest before it is, nor for people to let go before it is.

Then what exactly is wrong with “allow everything to happen”?

It fits an approver onto something that never needed approval.

Rain falls without waiting for anyone’s permission. Night comes without waiting for anyone’s acceptance. A flare of anger rises without waiting for anyone’s consent; when it settles, it doesn’t wait for anyone to let it go either. Happening never waits for approval. There is no doorway where someone stands and says “approved” and then things happen; nor a doorway where someone stands and says “not approved” and then things don’t happen.

In this matter there is neither allowing nor not allowing. This is not to say a person must achieve “neither allowing nor not allowing”; that would be another new piece of homework. It is that the position was never there. Things are, being is being, and it applies to no one.

And the practitioner?

Practice is not bad at all. Sitting down, breathing, chanting, reading: these really do change a person, less flustered, more at ease, seeing a bit more clearly. But practice often grows a practitioner: a me who “is practicing,” a me who “has reached such and such a level,” a me who “is closer than those who don’t practice.” This practitioner is yet another label hung on the body.

It can also be seen this way: there is no I practicing; there is only practice happening.

This moment of sitting is being; this breath is being; this line chanted is being. They are things happening, like eating, walking, washing dishes. Practice happens, days happen; practicing and not practicing are both one time happening in this place. The moment of practicing is not a step from “not being” toward “being”; the moment of not practicing has not landed outside being either.

The one who wants to eliminate the small self never needed to take that job on. The small self doesn’t need eliminating. The “I” is the voice that being speaks in this place; it gets hungry, gets afraid, talks, answers; it is real. What is extra is not this voice but the manager standing at the door, notebook in hand, who even wants to do his own elimination himself; yet even he shows up here, in being, and doesn’t need anyone to go and eliminate him.

As for oneness, merging, no distinctions: people sometimes have such a moment, holding someone they love very much, or lying in an open field at night looking at the stars, when that layer of being cut off suddenly goes, and it is as if they were joined to everything. That moment is real; it is “not cut off.” But not cut off is not “melting into a lump”: when the moment passes, the stars are still one by one, and the person held will the next day say something you never expected. There is no need to dissolve all differences before you have arrived; the differences are all there, always side by side, always touching, never cut off to begin with.

The words “become one” also need saying precisely. In Chinese, “oneness of heaven and humanity” is tian ren he yi: heaven and humanity joined into one. To say “joined,” there must first be two: an I and a whole; a person and heaven. The practitioner wants to join these two. But what is joined can be separated again; however tightly joined, it is still two side by side. If they really are two, a lifetime of practice will not make them one; if they were never two, there is nothing to join. This place called a person, the shape it shows now, this body sitting, this thought coming up, even that dejection of “I haven’t merged yet,” are all heaven showing here, one-to-one, without a hair’s gap. It is not that a person and heaven have been joined into one; it is that in this one time, a second person never split off to stand outside heaven waiting to merge in.

The characters written on paper are interesting too.

At the character 二, “two,” people easily think of two sides: you and I, good and bad, gain and loss. Two sides are real, and sometimes truly opposed. But people easily think one step further: since it is two, there must be a gap; to make one, two must first be removed.

Now look at the character 人, “person.” One stroke falling left, one falling right: two strokes from the start, a “two” as well. The left stroke has not become the right one, nor the right the left; they lean together at the top, and that is “person.” This character is two in one place: both sides still there, neither swallowing the other, yet written as one character.

Now look at the character 天, “heaven.” Written out, the lower part looks like 人, “person,” and the two horizontal strokes above look like 二, “two.” If those two strokes were taken for a gap between heaven and person that must be erased before they can be made one, then once they were erased the character for heaven would be gone, and on the paper only “person” would remain. But those two strokes were always strokes of this character. Two has not been erased, and that is why heaven is heaven.

So two need not be destroyed. You and I are still you and I; good and bad can be told apart, gain and loss each have their weight; when they are opposed, the struggle is a real struggle. But being different is not being sealed off; two is still there, and there is no need to set up between the two a wall no one can cross. Seen this way, heaven and person are not two things waiting to be joined either: person is two written in one place; heaven is two still plainly there above this place. Two and one were always together in these two characters. Why should heaven and person wait for some separate work of “joining”?

Oneness, then, is not a state you have only once you have practiced your way to it, and lose if you fall back; if it is spoken of, what is spoken of is only how things already are: so while practicing, so while dejected, so when the person held says something unexpected the next day.

One more thing must be said: this book, too, could become a new doorway.

Reading this far, it is easy to think: right, I understand, I won’t stand at the door any more; I’ll do as this book says, not approve, not manage, let being be by itself. With this thought, you have gone to stand at the door again, with a different notebook in your hand: did I stand at the door today? Did I manage today?

This book is not a method and does not teach how to let go. All it says is: the doorway is inside the door too. Understanding it, being; not understanding it, being too; finishing it and still standing at the door every day, being too.

Leaves never say “let it go.”

When autumn comes to a leaf, between its stalk and the twig a thin layer slowly grows, separating it from the tree. The wind blows, and it falls. No leaf on a branch is reciting “I must let go, I must let go,” and no tree stands beside it saying “I allow you to fall.” Its falling is falling itself.

Someone carries a bucket of water a long way, his hand gripping the handle the whole time, gripping till it goes white. When he arrives and sets the bucket down, the hand keeps its gripping shape; only after a while does it slowly loosen by itself, the fingers opening one by one, blood flowing back to the fingertips, warm, tingling. That hand did not “let go”; when the time came, it loosened by itself.

These things share one shape: they all move by themselves. Coming, they come of themselves; going, they go of themselves; loosening, they loosen of themselves. There is no one standing at the door, no approver, no manager. Being being is moving; it never needs anyone to let it through.

But let one question stand here for now.

Happening does not wait for approval; there is neither allowing nor not allowing. Does that mean everything that happens is good? Someone hurts someone; that too is “happening,” needing no one’s approval; does that mean we just leave it?

No. In being there is no ought or ought not, and being speaks well of nothing on anything’s behalf; but this place called a person, meeting pain, will say “this is wrong,” will step in, rescue, take responsibility. Only, the one who says “this is wrong” is not standing at the doorway of being, ruling on who may exist; it is inside, in this place, one thing happening. This will be made clear later.

On many nights afterward, that sleepless man still can’t sleep, still looks at the clock, still tells himself “stop thinking.” Sometimes he suddenly smiles: at the door again.

Having smiled, he doesn’t order himself off duty either. He just lies there, listening: outside, a car drives past; upstairs, someone gets up to use the toilet, and the flush rushes once.