Chapter 15
LETTING GO OF CONTROL

The Chinese poet and sage Chuang-tzu speaks of a man crossing a river in his boat.  As he is navigating through the waters he notices another boat coming his way.  As he thinks he sees someone in the oncoming boat he yells, "Steer aside!" and gesticulates and swears as the boat continues toward him.
     But Chuang-tzu suggests we imagine that same fellow crossing the stream when he looks up to yell at the person in the other boat and discovers the boat is empty.  "Even though he be a bad­tempered man he will not become very angry." The boat is being carried toward him by the currents, but since there is no one in the boat he is not threatened or angered.  It's just an empty boat.  And as the boat approaches he skillfully puts his oar out to steer the other boat aside so that a collision will not damage either vessel.
     Chuang-tzu suggests that We empty our boat.  That we relate to the world from that openhearted emptiness that flows with what is, so that nothing that comes out of us will be coming from the "someone-ness" which opposes the flow.  That we let go of control of the world and come fully into being.
     As soon as the mind's conditioning to be someone arises, a kind of pain comes into our heart.  A feeling of being alone.  It is the loneliness of our separateness.  Our alienation from the universal.  But when we sit quietly with that loneliness and let it float in the mind it dissolves into an "aloneness" which is not lonely.  But is rather a recognition that we are each alone in the One.  It is the great silence of the universe "alone" in space.  It has a wholeness about it.  But to change the intense loneliness of our personal isolation into an "aloneness with God," we must gently let go of control and stop re-creating the imagined self.  We must surrender our specialness, our competition, our comparing minds.
Control is our attempt to make the world align with our personal desires.  To let go of control is to go beyond the personal and merge with the universal.
     Control creates bondage.  Control is the defender of the clinging mind.  It opposes the openness of the heart.  If our boats are empty, though there is still a vessel carried by the prevailing winds and currents there is not "someone" in it to be misunderstood.  There is no one to oppose.  There is simply empty space, boat, water, wind.  Everything is in perfect harmony.  Nothing is pulling against the natural flow.  No one in the boat: no one to suffer.
     Chuaiig-tzu wrote of the ease that comes about when we let go of control and tune to what the ancient Chinese called the Tao, the flow, the effortless way of things.  Tao also means "just this much."