Meditation: this word with all its history and contexts - cultural, spiritual, contemporary. Its one of those weighted words shrouded in mysticism and mystique. It was once known as a spiritual discipline practised only by a fringe demographic - the monks, the ascetics, the masters. In the last half a decade, it has become widely popular in the West as a daily practice to cultivate relaxation, well being and self awareness. In Asia it has been a part of people's lives for centuries. There are many forms of meditation practice each prescribed to achieve different objectives. These range from simpler techniques which focus on breathing, repetition of certain mantras to the more arduos and extreme: kundalini techniques and subjecting the body to extreme physical and environmental conditions among others. But what is meditation? Its a question that I asked a long time ago.
It's like asking someone: What is math? We've all studied arithmetic, algebra, geometry, calculus - some of us have delved even deeper. But in my own experience there are very few occasions I can recall that I ever took the time to question what I was studying and to really develop an appreciation for math in the context of my own life. What is Math's relationship with reality and how do they shape each other? Luckily (or unluckily) for me I did ask that question about Meditation.
Growing up in India - meditation was not a novelty. In fact, it was as mundane as breakfast or geography. A lot of people practised it in one form or another. Kids despised it, parents preached it (but secretly dreaded it) while grandparents told many stories of an uncle or aunt who had met so and so's guru and had had some remarkable out of body experience. Almost everyone I knew growing up had either been a student of or at least consulted with one of India's many 'wise' sages or sadhus (incidently more easy to find than a reliable tax accountant).
In high school, Transcendental Meditation (TM) was part of every morning's ritual. I still remember the vice principal's voice over the PA announcing : "Students, sit back sit comfortably. Close your eyes. Start chanting the mantra and the meditation begins." Try convincing a bunch of 30 odd adolescents to still their minds for 10 whole minutes. Surprisingly though, everyone did it. Except me. I was a troublemaker, I had no choice. I would spend my 10 minutes trying to get the other 29 to follow my lead. Needless to say, the teacher hated me with a passion that verged on murderous. And while the attention-seeking, rebel-without-a-cause persona that I adopted got off on the controversy there was a much more fundamental reason I was protesting.
My introduction to meditation was a very personal affair. One night, at the age of eleven, I was lying in my bed in the darkness waiting for sleep to overtake me. I remember being fascinated by the silence - that loud, all pervading static that would overwhelm me in the quiet of the night. I remember playing games with it, allowing myself to hear it until it got really loud at which point I would turn away from it in fear. This one night the silence was particularly loud and I was feeling particularly adventurous. As it got louder, I sat up in order to listen better. In the pitch darkness of the room there was only me immersed in this vast ocean of silence. And then suddenly out of nowhere the following words popped into my head: "I want to know what God is." It sounds like the worst kind of cliche I know, but that is how the whole journey began for me. The statement confused me because I had had no spiritual motivation whatsoever until that point. Nor was my family particularly religious. They all had their own beliefs and practices but never had any of it been forced on me. And so I began meditating. It became my nightly ritual and I followed my own rules. Sometimes, I'd sit, sometimes stand, sometimes my eyes would be open, sometimes closed. Sometimes I'd repeat a mantra, sometimes I'd just listen to the silence. I practised every night for years.
And so when I began high school I had already cultivated a deep intuition for meditation. I found the daily TM practice in class restrictive and empty of true depth. One day when I decided to play nice and actually meditate with everyone I sat back softly focusing my gaze on the blackboard and naturally fell into a very deep peace. This lasted only a minute before I was rudely roused by my teacher's scowling face, "Shiv Sengupta!" she scolded. "Why are you not meditating?!"
"I am...," I attempted to defend myself.
"How can you meditate with your eyes open??!" she scowled back. What an absurd question? How can you not? That was my response. It was not well met. Needless to say I never meditated in school again.
The experience tainted my perception of the world. It was the first of many similar life experiences that would make me fiercely skeptical of authority, rules and group-think. Meditation to me was one of the purest experiences. To deaden it with rules and ritual to me was the true blasphemy. And so I continued to pursue it in private.
In my early twenties, my meditation practice intensified. It had now become my one fundamental path to that holy grail that is Enlightenment. I wanted it more than anything. And this hunger was reflected in my hardcore and often reckless meditation. The human mind is only an instrument like the human body. It too can be exercised to great lengths and it too can suffer fatigue and injury. I began pushing myself into long intensely focused sessions, a few on occasion lasted over 24 hours. I began to have visions, psychedellic experiences, massive energy surges, feelings of euphoria. It became the way I tested myself and my spiritual determination. And I wanted to do it alone - no guide, no master, no guru. I had heard tales of people having strokes without proper guidance, but it was a risk I was willing to run.
Eventually it took its toll. I became emotionally unstable. While the meditative highs were addictive, the come downs were super low much like it is with most drugs. I became extremely depressed. I began to see the emptiness of my spiritual pursuits.
My relationship with meditation radically changed after my first spiritual awakening. I had now tuned in more carefully with my inner voice: that quiet voice I'd always heared but most often ignored. I began to trust it and to listen to it. It introduced me to a new relationship with meditation. Whereas previously meditation had been an experience more akin to combat where my mind was an oppressor that I had to master, dominate and transcend, it now became more like a dance. Where the mind was my partner and I the witness. I tried to enter each meditation with little or no agenda. To simply sit and experience myself in relationship with my environment. To watch, listen and learn from the wisdom of my own mind and body. To allow the world to be just as it was without the overlay of an ego. And thoughts still came and went. And opinions still arose about the dog barking in the distance or the noisy neighbors and their family drama. But now I invested little effort in following the thoughts or pushing them away. Instead my primary motivation was one of deep curiosity. Yet, I still followed a schedule and sat down to meditate every morning and evening though the energy and intention was a very different one now.
Then, one day I realized I had to stop. I realized that my meditation had become a crutch - no matter how much peace and well-being it gave me. I realized that the way I felt during meditation and the way I felt in my everyday life were very different. And it was what made me crave solitude and made me value my moments of meditation more than those in 'real life'. And I knew that any state no matter how beautiful or peaceful was not true if it was contrived. It was a difficult choice but a necessary one. I didn't want to feel that deep peace in the isolation of my balcony watching the trees swaying in the breeze - I wanted to feel it in daily life: in traffic, while doing the dishes - in the most mundane of circumstances or not at all.
So I stopped my practice. And I felt the effects quite acutely at first. I was thrown off balance emotionally. I had no safe haven to turn to when I felt confused or clouded. There were many times I was tempted to restart my ritual. But the inner voice always reminded me of the wisdom of letting go into the unknown. Not long after I noticed something different. The meditation found me. It came at the strangest moments - uninvited and unexpected: while driving a car, in the midst of a conversation, while working out. These moments of deep peace, objective clarity and felt oneness started to show up for brief instances throughout my day. And if I tried to hold onto it, it would be gone before I knew it. And so I let it be.
Like a bird that I had once caged and now set free, the meditation returned more and more often. It revealed itself to me in all its simplicity. That question: "what is meditation" that I had pondered for so many years suddenly became starkly obvious.
Meditation is the natural way of all life. It is not a practice although we make it into one. Just like walking is the most natural way for humans to move yet one can make an exercise, a sport and an obsession out of it. Walking can be a means of arriving at your destination. But in essence to walk is to be in movement. Therein lies the simplicity and harmony.
Meditation is the natural way of all life. It is a state of being deeply rooted in one's Self. We are all born in meditation. Every infant, every animal, every plant , every rock is in deep meditation. Every river, every tree, every moment is in deep meditation. It is we who having created these mind made realities- in which we struggle and strive and achive and fail and rejoice and suffer - view meditation as a practice by which we can achieve peace. But how can you achieve that which is always already present? We see peace as opposite to war, we see peace as opposite to violence, we see peace as opposite to suffering. As long as we mistake peace to be some static state or circumstance that we can get to if we just TRY HARD ENOUGH....
Meditation is the natural way of all life. There is no way to meditate just as there is no way to be. You are. Whether you like it or not. No matter what the story of your life, regardless of who you think you are and what you have or haven't achieved - you are already in deep meditation with the rest of Life. You are already in peace.
Meditation is the natural way of all life.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Friday, April 27, 2012
The Day I Forgot How to Think
I was 22. I was in a strange place in my life and in my mind. Very little was making any sense anymore. I'd been on an 11 year 'spiritual trip' to find myself and I was staring a giant "fuck you" sign that was inescapable. I'd immersed myself in contemplating the ancients and the contemporaries. I'd studied western philosophy until it had begun to curdle my brain. I had banged my head against the Bhagvad Gita, the Upanishads, the vedanta and the Buddhist texts in futility sensing a depth of truth somewhere but in the end always failing to grasp that one elusive nugget. I had begun practicing meditation when I was only 12 and in a few years was experiencing all kinds of kundalini experiences. There were days when I would sit down to meditate and get up only 24 hours later. 3 or 4 hour sessions were the more common norm. But no matter what I tried or did or studied or attempted to grasp, it always eluded me. In the end it always came right back to this 'me' in the room and I couldn't escape him no matter how powerful the meditation or how profound the intellectual rationalization. This 'me' became my tormentor, my slavedriver and my unavoidable shadow. I fell into deeply depressive phases for a number of years which would come and go like the ebb and flow of a tide. But on one particular day, when I was 22, a strange shift began to occur.
I was at my worst. I had fallen into a depressive funk more consuming than any prior. My dad was visiting my sister and I at the time and he insisted we take a day trip to Toronto's Center Island. After much complaining on my part they finally convinced me that getting out in the city on a warm summer day would do me a world of good. It didn't. By the time we had taken the ferry and arrived at the Island I found myself wishing I'd never agreed. Still I felt terrible that I was ruining their day for them. So we decided to go separate ways for a few hours and meet up when it was time to go. I made my way down to the Center Island Beach where a long wooden pier extends about 100 metres into the lake. Finding a bench on the pier I sat down exhausted. The sky was cloudless and the lake a beautiful shade of blue. Sitting there gazing out at the lake, immersed in a deep sense of despair and helplessness, I fell into a quiet meditation. People came and people went. A family of chinese tourists even posed around me and snapped pictures. But I didn't care. I was done. I felt so completely beaten and defeated by everything. My will was dead.
When my dad and sister found me, I was still sitting there, I hadn't moved. 4 hours had passed and my skin had turned black in the sun. I told them that I was extremely tired and that I needed to go home. I barely made it back before the fatigue overtook me. I passed out and slept for over 18 hours....
I awoke to a strange gushing sound. It was everywhere - around me, in me. I could still hear ambient sounds like the birds outside my window and the traffic in the streets but all that was in the background. In the foreground of my awareness was this gushing static almost like a white noise. I rolled out of bed and stepped on to the balcony and my mouth literally dropped. Everything was alive. Everything was vibrant. Everything reverberated with and emanated energy. It was like I was seeing the world for the very first time. Sounds were tantalising: each one had its own unique vibration and if I really allowed myself to listen, each sound could take me on a journey of its own. For hours I just stood on that balcony gaping in wonder at what we would normally consider the most mundane things - a fire hydrant, a traffic light, a bird in a tree, a car driving by. But to me it was so miraculous that it was all even happening that I was literally just doing a double take after a double take after a double take endlessly.
At some point, I think I received a phone call from my dad asking when we were going to meet. That's when I realized that up until that point not a single thought had even entered my mind. Now, as my father spoke to me on the phone, I found myself losing focus on the content of the conversation constantly. Instead, my awareness was more interested in the sound of his voice, the timber, the depth, the intonations and the impressions. The words were just sounds and sometimes I would tune in but then tune out again. After some confusion on my dad's side I told him what was happening. He listened very patiently and he understood. Strangely enough, he said he had read a book on this just recently. He wanted me to read it. It was "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle. He told me that I had experienced a spiritual awakening. I didn't understand at the time. But I read the book and then I understood.
I remained in that state of emptiness for 4 months after. Thoughts came only when I saw the value in having them. Otherwise they left me alone. That incessant mental chatter that I had experienced since I was a child was now gone. With no means of refering to myself any longer I became free of the need to be anyone. When I met people I felt a genuine joy and sense of compassion for them not for who they portrayed themselves to be but for who they really were which was no separate that my self. Nature too, trees especially became great spiritual teachers. But the Lake remained my master. I visited her often to pay homage for what she had shown me. That state of child-like wonderment, that felt connection with everything living or inanimate and most importantly the absence of a self identity. That was the greatest freedom.
After 4 months the intensity began to fade. Thoughts began to creep in more and more and before I knew it I was back to being me again with all the neuroses and the complaints and the wants and the desires to find myself. That was an irony that was hard to understand. But something had changed. A lot had been dismantled, and when my psyche reassembled itself it did so with a lot more missing pieces and holes. So I could never again be so completely convinced of the reality of my own mind.
At 27 it happened again. Again lasting for almost 4 months. But this time it was my heart that expanded and expanded until it finally exploded like a dying star in a supernova. Whereas the first experience was categorized by a deep pervading silence, this one was one of sheer felt compassion. Everything I saw from a beautiful flower to a newspaper fluttering in the wind to a dog taking a leak, filled my whole being with so much joy and gratitude for life that I would burst into tears and just repeat the words "thank you". The gratitude was utter and immense. I cried a lot in those months and so i kept to myself in order not to freak people out. But that also eventually passed. Again my psyche restructered but now the holes were obvious. I never felt suffering again the way I used to.
Last month a shift happened. It was not a monumental one like the previous two. It didnt have any fireworks or feelings of wow. It happened while I was at the computer. It was a split second feeling of "oh". In that one momentary shift I realized that now there is no turning back.
I was at my worst. I had fallen into a depressive funk more consuming than any prior. My dad was visiting my sister and I at the time and he insisted we take a day trip to Toronto's Center Island. After much complaining on my part they finally convinced me that getting out in the city on a warm summer day would do me a world of good. It didn't. By the time we had taken the ferry and arrived at the Island I found myself wishing I'd never agreed. Still I felt terrible that I was ruining their day for them. So we decided to go separate ways for a few hours and meet up when it was time to go. I made my way down to the Center Island Beach where a long wooden pier extends about 100 metres into the lake. Finding a bench on the pier I sat down exhausted. The sky was cloudless and the lake a beautiful shade of blue. Sitting there gazing out at the lake, immersed in a deep sense of despair and helplessness, I fell into a quiet meditation. People came and people went. A family of chinese tourists even posed around me and snapped pictures. But I didn't care. I was done. I felt so completely beaten and defeated by everything. My will was dead.
When my dad and sister found me, I was still sitting there, I hadn't moved. 4 hours had passed and my skin had turned black in the sun. I told them that I was extremely tired and that I needed to go home. I barely made it back before the fatigue overtook me. I passed out and slept for over 18 hours....
I awoke to a strange gushing sound. It was everywhere - around me, in me. I could still hear ambient sounds like the birds outside my window and the traffic in the streets but all that was in the background. In the foreground of my awareness was this gushing static almost like a white noise. I rolled out of bed and stepped on to the balcony and my mouth literally dropped. Everything was alive. Everything was vibrant. Everything reverberated with and emanated energy. It was like I was seeing the world for the very first time. Sounds were tantalising: each one had its own unique vibration and if I really allowed myself to listen, each sound could take me on a journey of its own. For hours I just stood on that balcony gaping in wonder at what we would normally consider the most mundane things - a fire hydrant, a traffic light, a bird in a tree, a car driving by. But to me it was so miraculous that it was all even happening that I was literally just doing a double take after a double take after a double take endlessly.
At some point, I think I received a phone call from my dad asking when we were going to meet. That's when I realized that up until that point not a single thought had even entered my mind. Now, as my father spoke to me on the phone, I found myself losing focus on the content of the conversation constantly. Instead, my awareness was more interested in the sound of his voice, the timber, the depth, the intonations and the impressions. The words were just sounds and sometimes I would tune in but then tune out again. After some confusion on my dad's side I told him what was happening. He listened very patiently and he understood. Strangely enough, he said he had read a book on this just recently. He wanted me to read it. It was "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle. He told me that I had experienced a spiritual awakening. I didn't understand at the time. But I read the book and then I understood.
I remained in that state of emptiness for 4 months after. Thoughts came only when I saw the value in having them. Otherwise they left me alone. That incessant mental chatter that I had experienced since I was a child was now gone. With no means of refering to myself any longer I became free of the need to be anyone. When I met people I felt a genuine joy and sense of compassion for them not for who they portrayed themselves to be but for who they really were which was no separate that my self. Nature too, trees especially became great spiritual teachers. But the Lake remained my master. I visited her often to pay homage for what she had shown me. That state of child-like wonderment, that felt connection with everything living or inanimate and most importantly the absence of a self identity. That was the greatest freedom.
After 4 months the intensity began to fade. Thoughts began to creep in more and more and before I knew it I was back to being me again with all the neuroses and the complaints and the wants and the desires to find myself. That was an irony that was hard to understand. But something had changed. A lot had been dismantled, and when my psyche reassembled itself it did so with a lot more missing pieces and holes. So I could never again be so completely convinced of the reality of my own mind.
At 27 it happened again. Again lasting for almost 4 months. But this time it was my heart that expanded and expanded until it finally exploded like a dying star in a supernova. Whereas the first experience was categorized by a deep pervading silence, this one was one of sheer felt compassion. Everything I saw from a beautiful flower to a newspaper fluttering in the wind to a dog taking a leak, filled my whole being with so much joy and gratitude for life that I would burst into tears and just repeat the words "thank you". The gratitude was utter and immense. I cried a lot in those months and so i kept to myself in order not to freak people out. But that also eventually passed. Again my psyche restructered but now the holes were obvious. I never felt suffering again the way I used to.
Last month a shift happened. It was not a monumental one like the previous two. It didnt have any fireworks or feelings of wow. It happened while I was at the computer. It was a split second feeling of "oh". In that one momentary shift I realized that now there is no turning back.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
The Reality of Opinion (an opinion on reality)
Where do opinions come from? We have so many of them. We're surrounded by them. These opinions about ourselves, about each other, about people we've never met, about people who no longer exist, about the world we live in. Opinions about what the world should look like, about what we should look like, about what other people should look like. About what we should do, about the right thing to do, about what we shouldn't do and about what should be stopped from being done.
Why do we have opinions? Why do we place so much value on them? People who have strong opinions on subjects, especially if they are important ones like war, oppression, politics or human rights, are deemed worthy of at least a certain degree of consideration even if their opinions do not resonate with the common consensus. Yet those who don't hold opinions are often looked at with a sort of pity or disdain or not even noticed at all, much like a homeless man sitting in the midst of a busy street. "Sitting on the fence" is one of the biggest taboos in our society.
But most essentially, what is an opinion? Its an idea, a perspective, a hypothesis on reality at best. Its a way in which we overlay reality with a certain flavor of ourselves.
Opinions are essentially about feeling comfortable with reality. Its our way of knowing without really 'knowing'. Its our way of bridging the gap between reality and possibility, between the known and the unknown. Its our way of feeling useful and meaningful. Reality happens the way it does without our permission. Famine happens, war happens, death happens, shit happens. Also joy happens, peace happens, freedom happens, good things happen. But even all that is just an opinion. The only reality is that Life happens in all its shapes and forms without reason, without permission, without qualification. Opinions create an illusion of control. Because now we can 'pretend' we know, and if we know, well then we can do something about it.
Many argue that a strong opinion is a necessary precursor to definitive action. That you must feel strongly about something to affect change and so forth. In order to take a stand is it necessary to take a mental stand or an ideological stand? In fact, more often than not it seems to work the other way around. That strong opinion stands in the way of definitive long lasting change. The kind of change opinion and ideology affects is not real change, not long lasting transformational change. Its more superficial. A same shit different day sort of mask.
Change is not an ideology its a law of Life. Everything changes and nothing can escape this reality. You, I and the world are changing as we speak. We are aging right now, our cells are dying and regenerating, millions of creatures are perishing and million others being born. Not one single inch of the Universe is static as we speak. Even a human body at rest is a warzone of millions of cells battling bacteria, tissues regenerating and vital communications happening between the various nervous centers.And as you read this, a million stars are dying and a million others being born and countless galaxies are collapsing unto themselves.
Witnessed through the narrow keyhole that is the individual's perception, reality is something we can perceive, breakdown, analyze and address. From this perspective war is evil, fitness is key, cancer is an enemy, organic food is our salvation, pedophiles deserve no sympathy, everyone should vote, high self esteem trumps low self esteem, patriotism is a virtue etc. We slice and dice our experience of Life as we go along craving the tasty bits and balking at the bitter ones. At the very very least we all are expected to formulate our opinions of right and wrong, good and bad. We believe this sort of distinction is the basis of civilized society.
There is a perspective however that seeks to align itself more closely with reality than opinion. This perspective that I'm speaking of is not apathetic, nor devoid of emotion or passion. This perspective doesn't seek to divorce itself from the "evils of the world", it doesn't seek to isolate or distance or detach. This perspective sees the world as a single complex organism and Life as a flux of energy. From this perspective, Life is. Plain and simple. It doesn't qualify any further because it realizes its own limitations to fully grasp the totality.
This perspective recognizes that the individual is only a single infinitesimal aspect of the whole. Yet, it also sees that the individual embodies the potentiality of the whole, much like a single seed in a fruit on a tree contains the potentiality of an entire tree within it. This perspective grasps that the individual is not an isolated entity but rather an instance of infinite circumstances, energies and matter coinciding at a single moment, for a single moment.
It sees that everything is hopelessly intertwined. That birth brings death but also death brings birth. That oppression leads to freedom until freedom turns into oppression. It sees people put more stock in their ideas and beliefs than in realities - as a result they live in memories past and future aspirations. It sees that we've convinced ourselves that life is a survival game, that happiness is some future state, that people are inherently untrustworthy and that the planet we live on belongs to us - to destroy or save as we deem fit.
But most essentially this perspective admits that thoughts and ideas, from the loftiest to the most base, are only figments of imagination. All our beliefs, our opinions and who we think we are is the stuff of dreams.
This perspective doesn't hold on to opinions strongly and seldom feels the need to enforce its will. Although many people dismiss it as a dithering, an indecisiveness or a "sitting on the fence" it is quite the opposite. Consider the metaphor of a tightrope walker traversing a line hundreds of feet in the air. On one side lies a dark chasm which contains all the base traits of evil, apathy, lethargy, ignorance, hate etc, On the other lies the equally dark chasm of virtue, goodness, compassion, righteousness. Separating these two is the fine line of reality that the tightrope walker traverses one step at a time with utmost attention. If his attention wanders towards the chasm of virtue and he begin to think himself virtuous he falls, and vice versa if he identifies with a vice, he falls. Each fall in the end is only a figment of his imagination because when he snaps back to reality, there is only the tightrope and the one step he is taking.
This is a perspective that is intensely open and prepared to respond to whatever reality presents. It is capable of action that is unmotivated by agenda and compassion that doesn't serve some self purpose. It is a perspective that knows that it can never really know and it is at peace with that. While opinions may exist it does not give its allegiance to these opinions allowing them to exist freely within the space of its own awareness.
Why do we have opinions? Why do we place so much value on them? People who have strong opinions on subjects, especially if they are important ones like war, oppression, politics or human rights, are deemed worthy of at least a certain degree of consideration even if their opinions do not resonate with the common consensus. Yet those who don't hold opinions are often looked at with a sort of pity or disdain or not even noticed at all, much like a homeless man sitting in the midst of a busy street. "Sitting on the fence" is one of the biggest taboos in our society.
But most essentially, what is an opinion? Its an idea, a perspective, a hypothesis on reality at best. Its a way in which we overlay reality with a certain flavor of ourselves.
Opinions are essentially about feeling comfortable with reality. Its our way of knowing without really 'knowing'. Its our way of bridging the gap between reality and possibility, between the known and the unknown. Its our way of feeling useful and meaningful. Reality happens the way it does without our permission. Famine happens, war happens, death happens, shit happens. Also joy happens, peace happens, freedom happens, good things happen. But even all that is just an opinion. The only reality is that Life happens in all its shapes and forms without reason, without permission, without qualification. Opinions create an illusion of control. Because now we can 'pretend' we know, and if we know, well then we can do something about it.
Many argue that a strong opinion is a necessary precursor to definitive action. That you must feel strongly about something to affect change and so forth. In order to take a stand is it necessary to take a mental stand or an ideological stand? In fact, more often than not it seems to work the other way around. That strong opinion stands in the way of definitive long lasting change. The kind of change opinion and ideology affects is not real change, not long lasting transformational change. Its more superficial. A same shit different day sort of mask.
Change is not an ideology its a law of Life. Everything changes and nothing can escape this reality. You, I and the world are changing as we speak. We are aging right now, our cells are dying and regenerating, millions of creatures are perishing and million others being born. Not one single inch of the Universe is static as we speak. Even a human body at rest is a warzone of millions of cells battling bacteria, tissues regenerating and vital communications happening between the various nervous centers.And as you read this, a million stars are dying and a million others being born and countless galaxies are collapsing unto themselves.
Witnessed through the narrow keyhole that is the individual's perception, reality is something we can perceive, breakdown, analyze and address. From this perspective war is evil, fitness is key, cancer is an enemy, organic food is our salvation, pedophiles deserve no sympathy, everyone should vote, high self esteem trumps low self esteem, patriotism is a virtue etc. We slice and dice our experience of Life as we go along craving the tasty bits and balking at the bitter ones. At the very very least we all are expected to formulate our opinions of right and wrong, good and bad. We believe this sort of distinction is the basis of civilized society.
There is a perspective however that seeks to align itself more closely with reality than opinion. This perspective that I'm speaking of is not apathetic, nor devoid of emotion or passion. This perspective doesn't seek to divorce itself from the "evils of the world", it doesn't seek to isolate or distance or detach. This perspective sees the world as a single complex organism and Life as a flux of energy. From this perspective, Life is. Plain and simple. It doesn't qualify any further because it realizes its own limitations to fully grasp the totality.
This perspective recognizes that the individual is only a single infinitesimal aspect of the whole. Yet, it also sees that the individual embodies the potentiality of the whole, much like a single seed in a fruit on a tree contains the potentiality of an entire tree within it. This perspective grasps that the individual is not an isolated entity but rather an instance of infinite circumstances, energies and matter coinciding at a single moment, for a single moment.
It sees that everything is hopelessly intertwined. That birth brings death but also death brings birth. That oppression leads to freedom until freedom turns into oppression. It sees people put more stock in their ideas and beliefs than in realities - as a result they live in memories past and future aspirations. It sees that we've convinced ourselves that life is a survival game, that happiness is some future state, that people are inherently untrustworthy and that the planet we live on belongs to us - to destroy or save as we deem fit.
But most essentially this perspective admits that thoughts and ideas, from the loftiest to the most base, are only figments of imagination. All our beliefs, our opinions and who we think we are is the stuff of dreams.
This perspective doesn't hold on to opinions strongly and seldom feels the need to enforce its will. Although many people dismiss it as a dithering, an indecisiveness or a "sitting on the fence" it is quite the opposite. Consider the metaphor of a tightrope walker traversing a line hundreds of feet in the air. On one side lies a dark chasm which contains all the base traits of evil, apathy, lethargy, ignorance, hate etc, On the other lies the equally dark chasm of virtue, goodness, compassion, righteousness. Separating these two is the fine line of reality that the tightrope walker traverses one step at a time with utmost attention. If his attention wanders towards the chasm of virtue and he begin to think himself virtuous he falls, and vice versa if he identifies with a vice, he falls. Each fall in the end is only a figment of his imagination because when he snaps back to reality, there is only the tightrope and the one step he is taking.
This is a perspective that is intensely open and prepared to respond to whatever reality presents. It is capable of action that is unmotivated by agenda and compassion that doesn't serve some self purpose. It is a perspective that knows that it can never really know and it is at peace with that. While opinions may exist it does not give its allegiance to these opinions allowing them to exist freely within the space of its own awareness.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Without Love
(Written in the Winter of 2007)
Without love -
Those moments, they seemed so strange to me.
The night poured forth her melancholy
Into a despairing heart deprived
Of all that which it had ever strived
For, and thinking that it had attained,
Awoke one day to find naught remained
But the heart-shaped shell that had survived.
And without love -
Dreams turned into petty ambition,
That faithless void, my soul’s condition,
The poison they call Reality,
My drug of choice it now came to be.
And for many years, thus afflicted,
My ailing heart remained, restricted
By all reality couldn’t see.
Yet without love -
I rose one dawn to the morning air
Steeped, though I was, in a cold despair
The rays of a red sun warmed my breast
I felt something stir within my chest
And then, as I watched the sun emerge
My heart burst forth with a giant surge
Of love. I knew, then, that I was blessed.
With love -
Life became, once more, a gentle dream
And I, the dreamer, I’d always been.
On a journey new, did I begin,
A life in service of Man, my kin,
For a voice now whispered from above,
And as I listened, I learned that love
Is found not without, but from within.
~ shi-bu
The Song Without a Sound
(Written in the Spring of 2006)
And watched the Moonlight softly stream
In, streaks of silver silence all around.
And with her silent melody
The silver Moon, She beckoned me
To listen to the Song Without a Sound.
And lying there I knew the day
Had come when it was time to say
Farewell and to prepare myself for death.
A Moonbeam fell across my face
A gentle kiss of Moonlight grace
I closed my eyes and took a final breath.
And as the Moon began to sing
I felt the world and everything
Inside, begin to fade and disappear.
Till naught remained but Her and I
Suspended in a starlit sky
As She whispered silver secrets in my ear.
Enchanted, in Her spell I lay
And felt my soul being whisked away
To places that my eyes would never see.
We danced together through the night
On winged feet that took to flight
For distant dreams beyond Infinity.
~ shi-bu
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