Some reactions arrive already finished. A tone of voice, a short reply, a look across a room, and before you have properly looked at anything you already know what it means. Sankara, the eighth-century commentator with the rope and the snake, wrote one sentence about what that finished thing is made of. It is one sentence, and it is worth reading twice.
The apparent presentation to consciousness, by way of remembrance, of something previously observed in some other thing.
The sentence has three parts, and each one does work. Something previously observed. By way of remembrance. In some other thing. The snake on the path is built out of snakes seen before, and it is laid over a rope that is here now. Nothing about the rope produced it. That is also why it arrives so fast. Remembering is quicker than looking.
There are three things a person can do with the snake, and each one costs something. He can fight it: argue himself down, tell himself not to react. That is tiring, and it does not work, because every argument with the snake treats the snake as real and hands it straight back to him. He can make peace with it: step carefully round it, be reasonable about it, allow it its place. Then he spends the evening walking around a rope. Or he can look at the rope. That costs the story, including the part of the story in which he was right to be alarmed.
Looking takes effort. Nobody turns to examine their own first read by accident. The seeing takes none. You cannot try to see a rope. Once there is light on it, it is a rope, and the snake does not leave slowly, because it was never there. This is also why nobody gets good at it. There is no skill in recognising a rope.
So what are we aiming at. We want to put the light on the rope, and let the seeing do the rest.
Let us see where this shows up in an ordinary day. Three places.
- Someone at home says something in a tone that sounds like the last disagreement you had.
- A reply to your message comes back as one word, and the word already has a mood in it.
- You walk into a room and the conversation in it goes quiet.
In all three the thing to watch is one question, and it has two answers. Is this made of what is in front of me, or of something I have seen before. The read that arrives first is usually the older one.
You are not deciding anything in that second, and you are not trying to make the snake go away. Watch where it came from, and leave it as it is.