COVID-19 connectedness

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POSTCARD#366: Bangkok: Thailand reported 6 new coronavirus cases and no new deaths on Friday, May 01 taking its tally to 2,960 infections while fatalities remained at 54 since the outbreak began in January. On a global scale, the presence of covid-19 in our lives shows that when humanity is united in a common cause, social transformation is possible. Looking at changes in social behaviour, economy, and the role of government, an opportunity arises again to see the power of our collective will when we agree on what is important.

Here in Thailand, Jiab tells me she attended the death ceremony (the pouring of water) of her Great Grandfather when she was five years old. Death is no ending, death is going home… it’s how it is understood in most Asian societies. I imagine the same for III World societies everywhere. In the West however, it is usually hidden away and thus COVID-19 has revealed the reality, death is part of life.

We are the survivors after the War – as it is/was after any war, those who remain, understand that life is sacred. Each person, young or old, sick or well, is a sacred, precious, beloved being. What does it really mean, all the hugs, kisses-on-both-cheeks, handshakes and high-fives we are removed from right now (and may be adapted in some way in a more permanent basis)? It means let’s be connected by whatever means as an expression of love and spirit.

What makes it difficult is the Western belief in the separate self in a world of Other, me separate from you… driven by power and the fear of losing it. The obsession with money and property, extensions of the self – expresses the delusion that the impermanent self can be made permanent through its attachments. Some would say the exact opposite of the Buddha’s Teaching.

What’s coming is a wave of revelation; situations just taken for granted in the past are being reappraised, seen with compassion. How can we find out about those who cannot work from home? The hotel staff, the taxi drivers, the bus drivers, the janitors and cashiers. What can we do about those who have lost their jobs due to the covid-19 shut-down? What is the best way to help vulnerable people? The homeless? How can we be connected with people in the slum districts in inner cities?

The covid-19 shut-down activates compassion, leaders and activists start to emerge, campaigning for the situation of the helpless, in so many words… something is stirred. If we have it in us, we can see quite clearly, the ‘normal’ that once was, is gone. We just can’t fall back into the same rut; monotony and a sense of lack. What can we do abut this? How to be part of this new connectedness in the covid-19 separation?

What’s coming is a new vision of what society could become – one that is less authoritarian and fearful, and more collaborative and local. Unseen altruism, resourcefulness and generosity that arise in situations of grief and disruption.

Necessary to be careful all the way through to an agreement: “… with the decimation of small businesses, a dependency on the state for a stipend that comes with strict conditions. The crisis could usher in totalitarianism or solidarity; medical martial law or a holistic renaissance; greater fear of the microbial world, or greater resiliency in participation in it; permanent norms of social distancing, or a renewed desire to come together.”

Excerpts from Charles Eisenstein’s “The Coronation” included in this post.

 

the new-normal

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POSTCARD#365: Bangkok: The coronavirus disease has spread across the world. With it came the understanding on social distancing. On a global scale, people were expected to comply and they did, united in a common cause. The world population witnessed something that has never happened before. What will it be like when it’s all over? (Will it ever be over?) When can we get back to normal? Nobody knows when, and it’ll not be ‘normal’ as we know it, it’ll be a ‘new-normal’.

Every day counting the dead, an on-going catastrophe, the mind is fundamentally changed after the disaster experience, it has a psychological impact. Or it may be spiritual, or transformational, subject to who the actors and activists are, the realities, the karma of circumstances.

The Thai Government announcement on COVID-19, 22 April 2020:

Total number of infected to date: 2826

Treated and recovered: 2352

Deaths to date: 49

Still in hospital: 425

New cases: 15

Died today: 1

Start opening: May 1st or May 4th

The stay-at-home order is now in its fourth week, and how are we coping with our ‘stay-at-home-ness’? My wife, Jiab, is usually busy with Skype while I am hidden upstairs watching CNN. “This is CNN bringing you Breaking News”, volume fills the room. It is informative and kinda gripping if you’re lying in repose managing a headache. Sometimes I mute the volume and watch the facial gestures.

There’s a bathroom and a bed here, a large air-con room and comfortable armchairs. This is still the hot season, slatted blinds keep out the direct sunlight, makes it easier to see the TV screen. I also watch CSI and CSI Miami with Horatio forever posing with his small sunglasses. FBI Most Wanted, Blue Bloods and others. Stepping into the hypnosis of the general public: dialogue woven around a few good looking actors, studies in portraiture… I swoon with the posturing.

Aside from the enthralled watching, I do a little yoga and meditation, and go down to eat and wash the dishes three times a day. Jiab does the cooking or orders delivery. There’s also time spent writing posts, say 2 days per week – I’m not as dynamic as I used to be.

The headache comes and goes, never completely gone. It’s been five years, we’ve gone through a lot together, the headache and me. Remembering now there was a time when I didn’t have the headache, mourning the loss of the pain-free state I possessed in that other world from whence I came… all of it irretrievably gone from memory. Strong, angry emotions – red light, phone alarm rings, stop thinking. Return to watching the breath… the utter functioning of being alive. Watch TV, just dismayed – how could it be like this?

My headache, or the coronavirus is the imponderable. Our world is good but there’s always something that’s not right. Incompleteness, and the Buddhists say it’s this, the discovery of dissatisfaction, Suffering, Dukkha, the first Noble Truth. Years ago I was so glad to discover this because I was lost in it and at the best of times, wondering what that bad feeling was. There is Suffering, caused by Desire but there is a Way out, found in the Noble Eightfold Path. (4 Noble Truths)

Everything comes crashing in. The inevitability of events and present moment awareness. If I didn’t have the PHN headache condition, I wouldn’t feel as motivated as I do to look everywhere for the way out of this suffering, and thus begin to uncover the mystery.

If I’m having difficulty with my headache, and I’m trying to avoid it, the presence of it, the acceptance, it helps to think of it as another self; the headache is a person, a friend – I feel there are two of us.

Interested in the well-being of this other self, I say to my headache self:

“How are you today?

And he says:

“I’m okay but I have a headache”.

Even my headache has a headache, no surprise there.

When it’s time, three capsules of pharmaceutical forget-me-nots swallowed with a gulp of bottled water and in a short while, the intensity of the headache has moved away from consciousness – a long sigh of outbreath.

Last thing is: why am I doing this, writing these posts? There’s a lot to say and I’ve learned so many things from such a lot of good, kind, and wise people that I feel I have to share it with everyone.

May all beings be well.

 

 

headache and wind chimes

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Soi 14 Oct 23POSTCARD#364: Bangkok: I wake up in the morning with the usual headache, and from the balcony of the next-door house, wind chimes play a perfect chord in the air! I don’t usually hear it so clearly. Movements of the air disturb the chime bars and strike the same groupings of notes over and over. A different arrangement every time – variations on a theme.

The leaves of the trees whispering together, it’s going to rain. Then I remember, this is Songkran, the start of the rainy season. It is overlooked and forgotten that Thailand’s Songkran celebration event has been postponed because of COVID-19. The coming of the rains, of course take place around that time and because we’re all working from home, we don’t notice these changes in the outside world… until they arrive on our doorstep. I see the dark sky out the window, small birds dash around searching for shelter.

I have to get out of bed, bring the headache into the shower, and see how that feels. I slip through the curtains into a pleasant wakefulness, released from the memory of that which I’m held by, usually, and even though I’m not thinking about it right now, I become an extension of the wind-chime’s notes as they gently intrude in consciousness…

The rain will continue, a total downpour, lasting for hours possibly – and it is a novelty for me even though I’ve lived here for decades. I come from the North of Scotland where weather events are not so overwhelmingly generous in such an abundance of plant growth. It amazes me too that the Thais have a composure about these sorts of things, which are seen mindfully and with respect, as phenomena appearing in consciousness.

It’ll be like this for the remains of the day, all night and well into tomorrow when hopefully, the sun will come out again: 36 Centigrade (96.8 Fahrenheit) which is tolerable because of the cool shadows where everything stays wet.

Shower pressurized water massages the headache – lulled it into a relaxed state, mesmerized by sound and sensation. I am a sensitive being these days, on the negative side, there are sharp penetrating light frequencies and high pitched resonances which activate the headache and it can take a long time to recover. So far, so good, step out of the shower and I’m deafened by the downpour on roof and balcony objects. Sensory mechanisms function without my involvement. There’s just an alertness, waiting for things to arrive in consciousness. Seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching and cognitive functioning identifies and directs everything; an all-inclusive experiencing of awareness receiving and transforming itself.

I’ve learned how to see the pain in the context of the First Noble Truth and can abide in the small space that’s neither here nor there, rather than suffer it as something that is ‘wrong with me’ – informed by a created self and stories of past and future created in the mind. Knowing this brings it all to a standstill for a moment… this is how it is, the awareness of it, simply that.

Stories of past and future arise again and the narrative requires me to ‘believe’ in it before it begins. I’m hovering on the brink of what it could be, still contained inside that little space that’s neither here nor there… do I want to get swept away by this story, when I’m quite comfortable being here? It’s telling me I have to engage with it, become it [Bhava]… yes, but I’m also able to stay here in the space where it hasn’t happened yet.

Mindfulness of non-becoming. See how that feels here under the roof, with the deafening sound of it, the here-and-now of it – everything is always in present time. This torrent of raindrops is indescribable… like an incessant, fierce applause that goes on and on. I’m enthralled by it, spellbound maybe… time to get out of here and downstairs for breakfast then I can start the meds for the day. See how that goes.

 

transformation

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POSTCARD#363: Bangkok: I’m writing this in the house Jiab and I have had since 2003. At that time we were in the Bangkok suburbs but after a few years, the city grew up all around us, the urban highway extended itself into the neighborhood and real estate got snatched up everywhere. New Metro train lines are being constructed and in no time at all, condominiums started to appear over our humble single storey houses.

For most of its history the house has been empty, except for a cleaner coming once a week and our nephew, part time grad student acting caretaker. We were in Bangladesh for two years and India for seven years, returning to the Bangkok office in 2017. Even then, the house stayed empty because of the traffic problem and we had to rent a single room downtown, not too far to get to work in rush hour traffic.

At that time we used to come from the rented room to the house only on the weekends. These days of course, we’re all under the stay-at-home order and working from home, so we moved back into our house and now we get to see what it’s like to be at home every day of the week. People everywhere in the world who are working at home must be experiencing this one way or another.

Key in the search word in internet and find various restaurants are doing delivery of lunches and dinners online, as well as local delivery (from our neighbors) of a small range of home-cooked food items. The doorbell goes ping-pong!, I look over the small balcony to see. Yes it’s the lunch delivery, the motorbike guy there with his helmet and mask on and Jiab is masked too, taking the bag from him.

Shortly after that there’s another ping-pong, I look out and down there, a car is stopped outside our house with driver’s door left open. This must be a neighbor’s delivery. Curiosity gets the better of me and I go downstairs to see what’s going on. Jiab’s laptop and deskwork occupies one end of the long dining table, ceiling fan whizzing around (this is the hot season) and all her papers held down in the breezy winds with salt/pepper shakers and other condiment items from the table.

The remaining part of the table is laid out for two. Jiab has the chicken and Somtam (Green papaya salad). I have the Salmon with black Teriyaki sauce and Pink colored sweet ginger, which I share with Jiab and she shares her Green papaya salad with me. Then we have the Best Dessert in the World, Gelatin colored white and also transparent, with mango in the middle… more of an indulgence than anything else. We have one each and that’s it, lunch is done.

Interesting conversation over lunch, Jiab who was brought up in the Buddhist faith, found it hard to believe when I told her that at Easter we have an example of an immense transformation (Death of Jesus and the Resurrection). She didn’t have the same emotional connection as I do (having been proselytized all the way from childhood to adult life). So when it occurred to me that the Easter experience for Christians fits exactly into the transformation of the world economy after COVID-19, Jiab didn’t immediately see the significance of the transformation. Could be that only Christians see it. Not possible to discuss this at length here, maybe some other time.

The world-wide crisis looms and there’s hope but also uncertainty. We cannot project into a (possibly distant) future when everything has returned to the same stability we had before COVID-19 arrived. It could be a metaphor for the Easter story. We let go of the old way and find a starting point for the new, it’s a learning process. Learning how to learn and learning that this is possible – all the causes and conditions here are right for it… not seeking a forever state of contentment, just content with the state of things as they are for now, allowing for change.

containment

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POSTCARD#362: Bangkok: The Government on Friday, April 03, 2020, reported 103 new local cases of Covid-19, raising the total to 1,978, and four new deaths which increased the toll to 19. Thailand is a small country about the size of Texas. Efforts at containment of the virus means we are on stay-at-home conditions although some goods and services are still being delivered. I haven’t been out of the house for two weeks… have everything I need. We get most things by a masked man on a motorbike. He always gets a tip from this household.

My sense of being at home is quiet and at ease because we are provincial. Also the busy road network all around is deserted right now – everyone working from home if possible. So there’s time to reflect on what else is going on in our World of people on stay-at-home conditions.

Fortunately there’s also the opportunity to step into an introspective state/ meditation. I go to my most comfortable chair, sit down and close my eyes. Letting go of any anxiety felt right now. How does it feel? We’re here in the familiarity of our own homes, and that’s true for everyone else.

We are all ‘here’, in a metaphorical sense, in our various locations, North, South, East, West. In different parts of the world, in different time zones, we’re all experiencing that special feeling of being ‘here’, at home, right now.

Meditation is not an effort to make oneself peaceful, and there you are, end of story. It is a practiced development of that calm state of mind in order to see clearly how to step out of our fundamental confusion. Breathe in slowly, breathe out long, Watch the inbreath, the outbreath, we place our attention in ‘here’ the center of the body and focus on this state of being ‘here.’ Consider the difference between no-where, and now here.

Breathe in slowly, breathe out long. We’re all inside, ‘here’, inhabiting the space contained by floor, walls, ceiling and the furniture we live with. Be calm we are all at home. Relaxation and thinking about things while watching the inbreath and outbreath.

Stories come and go, pondering over this and that, and the awareness of being engaged with the thinking thing gets included in the searching – looking here and there as if I were looking for something I lost, but a while ago I forgot what it was. Can you believe it? The search function goes on, no matter what. If I start thinking about how to stop thinking, the mind gets busy searching for the way to do that.

Thinking has its own momentum, takes time to slow down; that’s the nature of it. With that thought, things start to fizzle out… letting it all go, until there’s nothing left and everything evaporates for a moment. In that instant there’s no thinking.

Breathe in slowly, breathe out long. The mind is alerted… an empty space opens up, a great mirror showing Consciousness looking at itself – the awareness of being aware. Silence and emptiness; everything held on ‘pause’. There’s the inclination to be actively thinking, yes the invitation to be involved with thought is there but the novelty of no-thought holds my attention.

The breath is so faint and light it’s almost not there at all. No other sensory input the mind needs to be engaged with; no sense object activates the chain of events and all that remains is the mind’s cognitive function.

Breathe in slowly, breathe out long. A curiosity stirs: the ‘self’ is a sensory experience; the experiencer is an experience – there is only experiencing. Consciousness is the sensory organ of the universe. Seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, and cognizance – this is how the universe experiences itself.

We are all ‘here’, each and every one of us, aware and observing the circumstances associated with this fundamental truth of consciousness.

Consciousness, perception, and reality interact by way of the six sense doors: eye, ear, nose, tongue, feeling, and mind. The one that is accessible is the mind sense-door, leading to awareness of all the other senses, including the sense that it is self-aware; a cognitive functioning focused on the sense of awareness. Everything falls away, leaving only the arising and ceasing of things. Then that falls away too and there is ‘the end of the world’. Beyond that, awareness continues – not dependent on conditions supporting awareness.

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn12/sn12.044.than.html

Excerpts from an earlier post: ‘self is a sensory experience’. Thanks to: ‘truthless truth’ for the discussion in 2012 that led to the publication of this post.

G   R   A   T   I   T  U   D   E

confinement

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OLD NOTEBOOKS: POSTCARD #361: Bangkok: Expanding into the spaces in the interior we never looked at before. The breakfast table 27 March 2020: I lift a glass of home-made juice to the mouth, apple and guava, and drink it all to the end… the very last drop, slowly dribbling down the frothy glass towards my mouth. The almost vertical glass held against open jaws, teeth, lips, tongue, and head thrown back as far as it would go. I stay in this position for a moment and glance across the ceiling up there, beautiful forgotten dry white space. The fan spinning and these recessed ceiling lights. Oh no! Bad move! The eye will automatically focus on an aspect of the light (I can’t get it to not do that) and what followed was an intense stab piercing the right eye like a bolt of electricity down inside the skull and pain in my head so bad I nearly fell off my chair.

Disabled for the rest of the day! It stayed with me even after taking the prescribed three capsules of pain killer – the meds couldn’t stop it, they only make me feel better about having the pain. So why was it so bad this time? Something to do with the unusual way to sit… head back into the shoulders, then the stab of light entered the neural network in a way that hadn’t happened before.

Stepping into present time: the world is experienced in duality, as in; there’s ‘me’ and there’s ‘it’, the Headache. ‘I’m here and that’s there’. How can ‘I’ get away from ‘it’? It’s no good thinking ‘I hate this pain, I want it to go away’, because it doesn’t just go away. What happens instead is, I get more and more attached to how bad it feels. There are views and judgments about ‘it’, the object in question; the Headache. I’ve had different forms of this Headache for five years, and was thinking I’d seen it all, but this one with the ceiling light was like being hit on the head hard, with a metal hammer.

Okay, so where to go with this? One thing I discovered that’s helpful, is that the ‘me’ I live with is not a substantial thing – sometimes not there at all. No-self, anatta, there’s no one here to feel the pain. Where does it go? Nowhere because it wasn’t there to start with. An illusion. The important thing is, if there’s no ‘self’ there’s no pain – the pain is there but doesn’t hit its target. Thus I’m motivated by the pain not to discover anatta, I just want to find peace and quiet and no pain.

Some years ago before the Headache arrived, I learned to play with the space between thoughts (Link to post “in-between thing), the space that’s absent of thought. Staying in the space in between, I see on either side and all around is the confused traffic of thought and I’m aware of that but not part of it. Depending on what’s going on, I seem to be able to pass through or over or under these thought items.

I can focus on one item of thought or whatever and then focus on another and maybe there’s a bit more focus on one than the other but I see it’s possible to be focused on both at the same time. What I see now that I didn’t see then is that this is about letting go of some of the constructs of a separate ‘self’.

“The Buddhist ‘Suffering’ dukkha has to be understood in terms of its cause: the origin of dukkha is our attachment to the sense of a separate self that makes the judgment, and creates ideas rather than seeing things as they are.”

“All life is a single event: one moment flowing into the next, naturally. Nothing causing everything. Everything causing everything.” [Wu Hsin]

Excerpts from: Gnosis and Non-Dualism, Ajahn Sucitto

to let there be no resistance at all

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OLD NOTEBOOKS: POSTCARD#360: Bangkok: I’ve had the pain in the right side of my head for five years, and swallowing these expensive forget-me-not capsules every wakeful moment since the whole thing was diagnosed. So every now and then I get round to reducing the habitual intake of pharmaceuticals and see how that works out. This time it was different in a significant way. Instead of having the meds everywhere in my bag, my pockets, my purse, gather them all together and keep them in one place, slightly out of reach. Up on the top shelf of the bookcase – not impossible to get to, but not easy to access… went to sleep that night and forgot all about it.

Then, somewhere in the darkness of early morning, the pain comes… ringing the urgency bell, louder and louder, nearer and nearer. Still in the dream state, ‘I don’t want it to be here!’ Panic and the fear of unknown things. Wide awake now and the fear is dispersed, but the reality of it triggers all systems in a wild inarticulate way – the avoidance, resistance. Obstructing it, subverting it by any means, running away from it.

‘What can I do?’ There’s nothing I can DO about it, except to reach out for whatever comfort there is nearby and see how that goes. But there’s just no getting-away from it. This is a no-choice situation and, strangely enough, things start to improve as soon as I stop trying to do something about it.

The immensity of the pain is occupying all the space and I’m backed into a corner. No escape, the only thing I can do is turn around to face the pain and step into it. Fearlessness, but really no other way to go, no choice – then the discovery; dropping the resistance to the pain causes a moment of ease to arise.

It was this action (or non-action) that led to a glimpse of consciousness without an object, quite an extraordinary, out-of-this-world feeling. There was desperation all around but just enough of an easing in the pain to tell me that whatever it was I’d done was the right way to go. Just letting it be there, without backing away. It was somewhere here I noticed the easing. Allowing the alarm to ring and finding the conviction to let there be no resistance at all, no tightening up. For this one insightful moment, the worst of it subsides and the emergency mode is switched off.

Then the pain comes back, deep stabs of it like bolts of lightning passing through, but the intention to allow space for the pain is still there. As the immensity of it become less and less, acceptance opens more and resistance begins to fall away. I see now there’s the intention to be open and accept the pain, hidden from ordinary wakefulness, buried deeper than the pain can reach.

An old friend sent me a link Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) It’s a mindfulness training to assist people with stress, anxiety, depression and pain. So I’m going to look into that.

this and then that

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OLD NOTEBOOKS: POSTCARD#359: Chiang Mai/Bangkok Flight: Phone alarm goes off… there’s something I’ve forgotten! It takes a moment to realize I’m leaving today, not tomorrow. Oh no… I’m not ready! Sit up, legs over the bed… cool floor tiles on naked feet. A flash of movement, brush teeth, shower, fling clothes in bag. Quick tidy-up of rooms, swallow 3 headache capsules, bag on wheels, into taxi and we’re off.

Even after sitting quietly in the taxi watching the streets go by, I’m still rushing and bumping into things in my head. Breathe slow and deep and just let the driver take me to the airport. We get there, bag on wheels, mask attached over the face. I think of the aloneness of Muslim women.

Struggling to be mindfully aware of immediate realities; the layers of security, and being shuffled through the portals and gateways: this, and then that – this, and then that. A sea of white masks and black hair… black irises and pupils show the whites of the eyes.

The parts these thoughts come together in the space of a moment. Did it happen before I was aware of it, or was it my becoming aware of it that required the parts to come together, and making sense of it in that moment. Are all moments the same? Whatever, each thought appears in its own window and I’m tugged away, involved, engaged in the story of it. Identikit assembled in each case for it is always a story about me as subject or object, features selected to match all the characteristics of who I think I am in each instance. And always the same, variations on a theme of Me and Mine.

It seems I have my headache to get adjusted to, now there’s now less need to rush through the crowds. So, how best to get along with things, having swallowed the meds before breakfast. Head spinning slightly, slow down and shuffle in the directional momentum through remaining corridors, doorways. Eye contact with people here and there over the tops of their masks… (a masked foreigner in their midst). Passing through the last portal, and down the narrow tube that brings me to my tiny seat.

A small space of window and looking out under the blue dome of sky, pink-white heavenly clouds: Here we are cruising at 35,000 feet and this is your captain speaking, we will soon be descending to Bangkok where the weather is sunny and bright with a temperature of 34° Centigrade and 94° Fahrenheit

Dialogue summarized like text messaging minimalism, words tell me what things are, fill a perceived empty space, create distance – it’s ‘out there’. Language gives everything a label, gives ‘me’ an identity; name and form (namarupa), creates a separateness, subject/object duality.

Emptiness and a lack of self, the deep knowing there’s nothing there triggers the reaction to fill the empty space with a self-construct, an image, a movie celebrity, a child’s doll, the sphinx, the totem pole, dependency on a perceived creator. I can rest in this fictional state and know it’s just the way the software works, it’s like this. Knowingness is at the base of it all, in every way.

‘… impossible to be aware of an experiencer because it is always the experience itself that momentarily occupies that space.’ [Alan Watts, ‘The Wisdom of Insecurity’]

off the top of my head

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OLD NOTEBOOKS: POSTCARD#358: Bangkok/Chiang Mai Flight: Rushing through the airport, late for my flight, with an urgent headache seeking attention like an inconsolable child. At the first opportunity I take off my mask and swallow another three capsules of forget-me-nots together with a small bottle of water I carry with me for this purpose. Losing track of the number of capsules I’ve taken already in all the discomfort of the journey. Another problem is wearing a mask intended for smaller heads than mine. There must be XL size but us big-headed folk are in the minority.

The flight takes about one hour and I’m in a half-sleep state, wakened by stabs of headache. Try supporting the head with one hand and an elbow on the chair frame. There, it’s seen as if separated from the neck and body. Feeling its weight, 5 kg (Wikipedia tells me), it becomes an object, the brain, the skull, eyes, teeth, facial muscles and skin. Vivid images conjured up by enhanced imagination, and the journey goes on.

Then landing… the aircraft swaying like a ship on the bumpy runway, all the rock-and-roll, accelerated, braked, jerked, and we’re here. Airport taxi to the apartment. I feel dizzy and my face is hot. Anyway I get there safe and sound, remove face mask.

So, how was the flight?

Yes, okay, not too crowded.

We found some large face masks for you.

Great, thanks

For a moment it’s strange to be speaking, looking for something to say. Thought associates words, pieces of the jigsaw puzzle.

How’s the headache?

Not too bad.

The head is an acoustic device resonating like a wind-instrument. Breathlessness of ‘voice’, tone quality created in volume of throat, in void of mouth and intricate cranial cavities. Small sounds like the reed of a wind instrument. Rolling articulated back throat cavities’ deep volumes of sound. Gasps and split bits of wet air that whistle and chirp for an instant.

I go to my room and sleep quite early.

Completely awake again at 4 am, and no headache. I roll over and pull the bedclothes around the shoulders and over the head, keep out the chill mountain air. Get myself up in the sitting position and with pillows stuffed under me, make the preparations for a half-hour sit, maybe 45 min.

Meditation for me, means relearning the practice of Vipassana, insight, seeing things clearly. I was quite active 10 years ago, when I got the headache 5 years ago it fell away to almost nothing.

But once learned, the practice remains, perhaps here and there, remembering it as we go along. Watching the in-breath and out-breath, only that. Stop the mind flitting around like a shape-shifter. On the way, I may briefly arrive at the place of no-thought, no ‘thingness’, nothingness but in a moment it becomes ‘somethingness’, its opposite – and again no thingness. Treading carefully through the landscapes of tranquility. Return to the actuality of the breathing and be aware of these kinds of things entering and leaving the mind.

The head, positioned at the top of this column of body wrapped in bedclothes, is seeing, observing what is coming into internal consciousness. I am not looking out at the World, the World (consciousness) is looking into me, into my eyes, takes the form of a visual object, now this, now that. And feeling through the other senses into this experience of sitting upright on my bed, this space of the room, this place. It’s like I am (we are) a sense apparatus for sensitive life, complex consciousness, which feels through us as sensory instruments. The reality of this, for some of us… is Brahman.

Come back to the breathing. Hard to do this, mind is not familiar with the ‘unthinking’ state… learning that it’s just this physical awareness and everything is as it is for a moment of consciousness, and another – then it changes again. I’ve got nothing to think about and that’s okay; thought, itself, is a downloadable software. Thinking is the whole story; random episodes, snippets, individual words. Then nothing, without thought, there isn’t any story. Training the mind to keep a note of the meds taken, rather than an off the top of my head figure, based on the remaining capsules, always at hand, for pain or for the small comfort that’s in it.

Ease the mental activity caused by things not being as I’d want them to be, them to be, need them to be, expect them to be (Dukkha: Buddhist suffering, dissatisfaction). First Noble Truth. Necessary to investigate this because doing nothing about it and just tolerating the suffering permits a willful attachment to it and that’s not the way we want to go.

Defeating all the mechanisms of mind with their crinkly acetate enclosures for these three capsules of forget-me-nots. Let go of the internal struggle, reach out for the universal truth. Birdsong and daylight slowly fills the room.

“Consciousness veils itself from itself by pretending to limit itself to a separate entity and then forgets that it is pretending.” [Rupert Spira]

There is nothing external to Brahman… a non-dual, self-luminous consciousness, [expanding] to encompass the entire universe, which is but the appearance of Brahman; everything is the Self.

[David Loy, Enlightenment in Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta:
Are Nirvana and Moksha the Same?]

the dreamer

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OLD NOTEBOOKS: POSTCARD#357: Bangkok: I’m writing about the headache that lives with me, sometimes gone and “gone is gone” I used to think. Then it comes back again, wearing a different suit of clothes, together with the crinkly acetate that contains the three capsules of forget-me-nots, and that’s how we get along. Similar to that flickering old fluorescent tube light that needs to be fixed. So I get the stepladder in place, go up three steps and unplug one end of the tube, pull out the other end and plug in the new one. Get down and switch on, and the new light is… quite heavenly.

So, it’s under this quite heavenly light, clear and bright, I revisit the flicker of illegible words scribbled in notebooks, review conversations and receive all that was said there, held, seen, nurtured and on and on until, the whole thing dissolves leaving no remainder. Of course that hasn’t happened yet, events are still unfolding. And next week (I don’t want to think about it) I go to the Pain Clinic to see the headache doc about a date for the next electrical pulsed needle into the scalp and the right occipital nerve – the intrusive ‘grab’ of electricity… GRAB and HOLD!

The present moment seems as if it is forever waiting in the transit lounge on the brink of becoming future time while engaged in contemplative pondering over the past. The present moment is always underway, and even if it feels like I have to hold it, tether it to the ground, and adhere myself to it in single-minded possessiveness, there’s no need because the present moment is inclusive of all of that too.

At the time, I was unaware of the implications of this however, falling into and out of hypothetical mind states, spinning across the ceiling in speculative conjectures; a runaway train, disaster movie showing the world as we know it, crashing through the restraints of how it should be, shown in slow motion; too heavy for the flimsy structure built to keep it in place… and I’m suddenly back in the present moment again.

We’re always only part the way through anything, anyhow and anyway at any time; here, there, or anywhere. Fresh new thoughts always somehow returning, stay for a while then displaced by the next moment of remembering… and the present moment is inclusive of that too.

And inclusive of that too, is death… who knows what happens after that, well, how could we reach that final ending and know what happens after that? Nobody ever came back from What Happens After That to say what it was like. All we can say is that this world will come to an end eventually.

The great ship, ‘Final Ending’ and all who sail in her begins to fall in on itself, as do great empires that have spanned the centuries, like castles made of sand, tumble to the sea eventually… then, in another kind of temporality, we see the Final Ending rises with the waves on to the surface again and everyone can go on where we left off. Consciousness shines like a new tube light, quite heavenly. It makes good sense to say that everything is subject to change, aniccan and in the end there is no ending.

We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream. 
This is true for the entire universe.” [Aitareya Upanishad]

Note: This post is a rewrite of my other post, “In the end, there is no ending”.