Postcards from Ulysses

In his address at the 2005 AGM, John Nichols said the following:

        On the subject of primary control, many of you will know a letter that’s become quite famous around the Alexander world, a letter that FM wrote to Frank Pierce Jones in 1945 containing a sentence that says, ‘There really isn’t a primary control as such.  It becomes a something in the sphere of relativity.’  Well, when you quote that in isolation, the primary control seems to be disappearing in wisps of ever-wispier relativity, until it fades away into the stratosphere.
        However, if you read the rest of that letter, you find something else he mentions to Frank Jones, ‘I don’t see how they can misunderstand the head and neck relationship.  People understand the effect of different positions and, for instance, that with the horse the fixed reins interfere harmfully with its efficiency in going up a hill in particular.  We always use the head and neck relationship when explaining to outsiders and find that it works.

    I am not sure exactly what Nichols wants to say here, though it does seem clear on the surface.  However, the discussion might benefit from two considerations.  First we should linger over that word “relativity.”  In the sphere of relativity, the head is relatively heavy.  And it sits atop a relatively tiny perch.  Therefore, relatively speaking, you might want to take a look at that relationship as a kind of barometer providing a good measure of the wispy something that is your real concern.  In a Zen meditation hall, the jikijitsu (overseer of the meditation) may look at the quality of your hands, or your back, or the relationship between head, neck and back as a barometer of the quality of your meditation.  But his real concern is something else, something very concrete yet completely wispy.
    This heads us to the second point: skillful means.  In that same meditation hall, the Zen Master may have some monks just counting breaths.  Of those, some count in-breaths, others count out-breaths, still others count both.  Meanwhile, some other monks may have this koan, and one or two may have that koan, and some may have no koan.  The history of Buddhism is the history of teachers’ giving students what they can handle, until what they can finally handle is that concrete wispy thing that is the ultimate dimension of the whole inquiry.  The Buddha might have written, "I don't see how people can misunderstand that their life is dukkha.  They experience it firsthand every day."  Yet Buddhism has been frequently misunderstood.  For instance, some see it as nihilistic or escapist.  Nothing could be further from the "truth." 
    When FM wrote, “We always use the head and neck relationship when explaining to outsiders and find that it works,” I think he gave us some evidence of skillful means.  We use this notion of primary control for those outside the inner circle of deepest inquiry, and we use it because that is what they can handle.  We use these words to explain things to outsiders, and it works.  Thus, it counts more as skillful means than a "real" mechanism.  We should care nothing for it.  We must in the end transcend it, even if few or none of our students do.  The Zen Masters tell us that even enlightenment must be seen as “nothing special.”  Why make anything of the relationship between the head and neck?  As for how people could misunderstand this head and neck relationship, a common thread of enlightenment experiences is, “It’s all so simple!”

This quote from Nagarjuna is one of the best on skillful means:

Just as the grammarian makes one study grammar,
A Buddha teaches according to the tolerance of his students;
Some he urges to refrain from sins, others to do good,
Some to rely on dualism, others on non-dualism;
And to some he teaches the profound,
The terrifying, the practice of enlightenment,
Whose essence is emptiness that is compassion.

That last bit is the kicker: the terrifying practice of compassion!  That is the true end of our Alexander Way: to see into ourselves and to connect to Life, to the creatures and objects in our lives--and to the groundless ground of it all.  The profound and terrifying practice of compassion for ourselves and others is at the heart of the Technique.  The primary control is just another point of entry.