parts of a whole

Posted on May 11, 2016 by tiramit

POSTCARD #208: CHIANG MAI: Sorry we’re closed for renovations, editorial work and improvements; facilitated and inspired by friends I’ve met here in the blogosphere. I wanted to take things a step further, turn the energy of the posts into a completeness; thinking of a book. I’m trying to see how all the posts could simply become that. I’m happy to go on writing and engaging in dialogue with friends in the comments box, but I’m wondering where does it go from here; just more posts, adding to an ever increasing number of posts, and no objective other than taking things to pieces to see how they fit together as parts of a whole.

WordPress admin page tells me there are 368 posts 815 followers and 4,878 comments. Unbelievable, it just goes on and on, and I’m so grateful to all the friends out there in the blogging world who are reading this, and those who have contributed in the comments box. I’ve been posting since December 2011 and twice a week from then until now, May 2016 – with only one other break when I got ill. A turning point if ever there was one; next thing was the PHN condition; learning to live with a headache that doesn’t go away… but enough said about that.

So having decided to stop blogging for a while, the first thing I notice is it’s hard to do that… hard to stop blogging. I haven’t properly figured it out yet, but I can see there’s an attachment to it, the blogger is driven, every few days, to get that post out. Same as how the potter flings a lump of slithery clay on to the wheel and holds it spinning there with hands and fingers moulding, shaping, forming it into a beautiful hollow object with mouth so open it feels like the whole outside is inside. Like the sculptor hacks and cuts and chips at the block of stone to release the form that got trapped inside there.

That’s the creative itch identified, and I will be adding more posts to the art page, otherwise not blogging for a while and I’m hoping this means I can turn my whole attention to the pain in my head. Why’d I want to do that? Just to be with it, understand it, see why it’s there – why there is a pain in my life, not as a question… more like a statement of fact and it becomes an object of contemplation. Is there a no-self space beyond the pain? (as Karin has said?) Some people would pray and ask a higher power to help them remove the pain or at least help them to see it differently and to guide them. Do I do that? Do Buddhists pray? Or is it all about just noticing sense perceptions with compassion and detachment?

I’m hoping to make some progress into this and find the energy to work on the book project motivated by the transformation, piece by piece, of the whole blog/book project – working title: ‘Postcards From the Present Moment’. Various people have suggested I should do this, I’m grateful to Ellen of stockdalewolfe.com and Karin at karinfinger.com, this is not an ending, I’ll be back with updates from time to time. As we get near to completion, there’ll be pre-publication news and a new beginning…

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UPPER AND LOWER PHOTOS: CABLES & SINGAGE, CHIANG MAI

the desire to believe in

Posted on May 6, 2016 by tiramit

POSTCARD #207: CHIANG MAI: Before my Thai niece M runs out the door to spend the day with her friends, she comes over to where I’m sitting and says: Toong Ting? I am going now. Bye bye! And she’s gone. I sit there for a while being Toong Ting, her pet name for me, part of her baby talk that remains because it’s thought to be cute when applied in a grandfatherly way. I feel like I don’t deserve it… the Judeo-Christian sense of guilt that doesn’t fit in this Buddhist country (I need to remind myself always). M is courteous and respectful as she’s been taught, a learned thing which reinforces the natural world-view children have. But I wonder if I’m worthy of it – am I simply taking advantage of people’s natural desire to believe in, to trust?

More than thirty years of living with other people’s preferences, adopting them as my own… how it is for the migrant in his/her host country. North Americans must have a deep familiarity with this. There’s a slight doubt that enters sometimes, it’s as if everything that’s done or said is a form of compliance, has the quality of procurement – how can I be as committed to being here as everyone else is when I know I could get on a plane any time and disappear? Moving from one ‘safe house’ to the next, the leave-taking between is sudden and children may forget me completely, or think about it for a lifetime and never understand why I went away. It’s something unknown, unthought in the Thai world. They’re so kind here. I feel I don’t deserve it.

The silence of the room comes as a surprise, birdsong in the trees opposite the window, and I wake up from this prolonged moment in search of the memory of who I am. The same as it always is; I’ve arrived here by the same route I’m accustomed to when reviewing the image of who I want to be and who I think I am. It happens in a tiny fraction of a second, so fast it feels like the process of trying to figure it out is in slow motion.

Objects scattered on the desk in the position they were in, unmoved, a pen, papers – a cup with a curious handle that appears to stick out further and wider than it should, waiting for my fingers to come and hold it… I’d be that person I think I am if I were to I reach for the cup. Alice in Wonderland, Drink Me says the label on the bottle… but I don’t and it doesn’t happen. Everything on the desk and the sofa and the floor remains as a quiet presence of M, these are her unclaimed, unidentified objects that come alive when she’s here. Maybe it’s easier for me than for the native inhabitant to choose to stay with the emptiness and silence of inanimate things, the motionless space where everything is situated, aware of context and content, and seeing that which normally passes unseen.

It’s a perception, and only seems real by comparison with other things that are thought to be not real… falling into the delusion it’s not delusion, or knowing it’s reality – we do it knowingly, we go with the illusion. For a moment it’s seen and this is how we escape from it. Sometimes it’s a familiarity displaced and we’re tricked into staying there believing it’s really real but we’ve only convinced ourselves that it is, and it can take years, a lifetime. A pattern found in the itinerary of former lives, all these journeys connected end-to-end, divided and subdivided into periods of looking out the twin windows of the upper front face of the skull as if it were a moving vehicle, and looking out and thinking: ‘are we there yet?’ Then back to the conundrum of being busy with thought, and never arriving.

Later in the day a message on my phone goes ding! A picture of somebody’s lunch. It’s from M they’re all in a restaurant I’ve been in before and I can imagine how that is right now…

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Photo: a carefully created pavement repair in Chiang Mai.

ever-present

Posted on May 3, 2016 by tiramit

POSTCARD #206: CHIANG MAI: Sitting in a taxi stuck at the red light in Nimmanhaemin, Chiang Mai town. The nearness to Southern China is obvious these days with the occasional Chinese number plate seen in Thai traffic and streets full of Chinese tourists, women in curious long white costumes and wide brimmed hats in the tremendous luminosity of sunshine. The border is do-able now the roads have improved; road 3Asia (R3A), part of the GMS North-South Economic Corridor. The total distance is 350 miles from Chiang Rai across the Mekong River into Laos, then on to the border town of Boten, and China’s Yunnan Region at Mohan.

I’d prefer it to be darknight, but instead it’s brightday, step outside and it feels like I’m in a television studio. Inside the car, cold air blasting through our enclosed metal bubble; this could be an ice-cream headache… then I remember this one is the one that’s always with me, ‘my’ headache is part of my life; ‘my’ arm, ‘my’ leg. Part of everything and right now, undeniably out there too, exposed in high resolution Photoshop enhancement. Light penetrates everything; the orange color of papaya fruit blinds me, street vendors’ cut pineapple painfully vivid. I feel I’m really a nocturnal owl-like creature, squinting in the daylight through slit eyes; a quiet presence behind sunglasses vibhava tanha, (buddhist term for the desire to not exist)… I am not here.

I’ve been away for only 2 weeks and now I’m back, all recollection of where I went and what I did when I was away are suddenly gone. There’s this feeling it never happened, I’ve been here all the time, only imagined I went. Somebody asks: where did you go? I went to Delhi, North India 2,300 miles away. Sixty-eight hours driving time on NH 28 through Myanmar, Bangladesh, Bhutan and India to Delhi… but I went by plane of course, so fast, and it’s as if I went there in my mind, gone from here for only a moment. A pause in mid sentence in the timeless ever-present…

My niece M, aged 12, is taller since I saw her 2 weeks ago; taller, longer and elongating as we speak, like a plant in the darkness searching for the light, sprawled on the back seat in an adolescent bundle of legs and arms, wearing a diver’s watch, colorful T-shirt; long black hair curtains a small oriental face, sometimes seen, when adjusting the thread of earphones cable, then disappears again. Sorry, she’s unavailable at the moment, plugged into the tablet device and YouTube videos while checking for messages at the same time on her phone device. Questions addressed to her remain unanswered.

It’s all one extended ever-present time, no seasons, nothing to say where we are in the year. Summer every day. Night comes at 6pm, instant darkness, then at 6am, instant daylight and each day is like the one before, and it all runs together, days become weeks, weeks become months, months become years. The whole thing is just one very long, continuous day.

Time disappears, I’m startled to discover I’m now an old person – lifetime is running out. Rip Van Winkle fell asleep and woke up with a very long beard. He discovers fifty years have passed since he fell asleep; people have died, his daughter is middle-aged, her children are grown up. There’s an awakening to this reality, unasked-for, it just falls into place…

Note: excerpts from an earlier post titled: ‘constructed reality’. Upper image: scene from the taxi window. Lower image: Chinese car number plate in Chiang mai

an end to journey toward

Posted on April 28, 2016 by tiramit

POSTCARD #205: DELHI CHIANG MAI FLIGHT: Hop, skip, jump and I’m back in Thailand; arrival on the Delhi flight; four hours flying time and transit at Bangkok for the Chiang Mai flight, one hour flying time. It’s only been two weeks since I was last here, the memory I have of it replaced by what it is now as if it were just a moment ago. I step into present time with a sweeping recognition of everything in the surroundings of the straight route taken in the direction of Transit Desk East – perspective effect down the very long passageway leading to a vanishing point. Boarding time for the Chiang Mai flight 30 mins from now. Speed walking along the same moving walkway I walked along only two weeks ago. Same high frequency sound piercing and resonating in my head. Same flashing red light: “end of the walkway”, as we change from one walkway to the next.

Same rush to get there; swept along in the urgency of the crowd and caught up in thinking it’s necessary to jump ahead of perceived obstructions in the mind; typically the group tours from Southern China, huddled together, first time away from home, the young and the old holding on to each other and blocking the passageway leading to the transit desk. I hear an official voice calling out in Chinese while I’m experiencing push-and-shove collisions with small rucksacks, elbows and full body contact with these small beings from a different planet; unfamiliar toothpaste smells.

I feel like I’m in someone else’s life; I’ve stepped out of my own life and into someone else’s, having to squeeze through the gaps in the crush, thrust, force, push and stretch-through long-arm reach to the desk – passport held in fingertips… and the Thai ground-staff member takes it just before the Chinese group leader pushes in front of me and slaps down two handfuls of passports. How lucky is that! The ground-staff member standing on a box above eye level facing the crowd, dressed in Chinese costume and is speaking Chinese at extraordinary high volume, splitting my headache in pieces. Necessary, to help the surging crowd, who are having difficulty filling in their landing form, and she’s holding up a sample; the blue form, and pointing to it so the people in the back can see and know what to look for.

She stops and looks down at me, the odd man out, sits down, opens my passport, sees the landing form is complete and then a very strange thing happens: elbows on the table, she lowers her head and starts massaging her long ear lobes between the thumb and forefinger of each hand. I simply don’t recognize this gesture; the first time I’ve ever seen it. Then I know what it is; I see the tiny hole puncture in one stretched out earlobe as the finger/thumb combination wriggles the soft worm-like ear appendage flesh piece around and a small grimace as she looks at me with one eye, asking to confirm my name, gives me the in-transit passenger C.I.Q status sticker. Below on the desk before her are the heavy Chinese earrings that go with the costume.

I’m through and into the single lane then the two yellow footprints on the floor where I have to stand and look at the camera, click. Passport pages turning then thump and just in time, Chiang Mai flight boarding now. I get through to the head of the queue and show my 4 years out-of-date gold card which still works. I don’t want to ask them about validity… back into a flying machine, find my seat and deep breathing exercise to slow down the fast forward momentum of the mind playing out the stories, and fading away.

It’s good to have an end to journey toward;
but it’s the journey that matters, in the end.
[Ursula K. Le Guin]

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knowing knows knowing

Posted on April 25, 2016 by tiramit

POSTCARD #204: DELHI: … like suddenly waking from a dream, an unfinished story and something just happened – so fast that everything is out of sync, skips a beat. It’s because I’ve been unknowingly holding this pain in my head that’s now breaking through and the holding is not as important as the getting away from it… this is not happening to me! With that recognition, suddenly there’s no ‘me’ to whom this pain is happening just the velocity of it, like a wind storm and I’m lying flat in the grass as it passes over.

Some time after that, having taken my meds and the pain is now walled off in a corner of the head, I’m sitting in a straight-backed chair, just to see how that feels. Breath enters the body like a wind gusting in, withdraws, comes back, blows through everything then it’s not there again. Focus shifts to a great emptiness opening up – opening and opening… I might easily believe this will never end, but moving along with it to see what the next thing is. The purpose of my life is the on-going experiential response to the impact of sensory contact – what else could it be about? Skin, muscle, flesh, and these mysterious organs held by ligaments bonded into a skeletal structure. It’s as if there’s an electrical charge in there, sparks flying out. I am the context for the outer content. The whole investigation is one that is open to following where the knowing of it leads, see where it’s going, how it reacts. Conscious awareness of how the mind is able to concentrate and to what extent – passageways of insight open in an instant and a great flood of things to think about pours in.

Thought sequences and memories become apparent when they reach the point of “being”… before that they’re in the uncreated state – arbitrary, disassociated. Things don’t exist at all, until I observe them. There’s the Observer Effect in quantum physics, the experiment showing that when one is observing the movement of electrons it changes their behavior. In Buddhist thought, the ‘observer’ is not the ‘self’ but the self-construct arising from responses to sensory input via the Five Khandas. Received data is formed according to the mechanisms of the human sensory process – including cognition, which is a sense like all the others, and the great dome of sky above. Mindfulness is a returning to that place where I see how things change through my engagement with them…

‘All we know of a thought is the experience of thinking, all we know of a sensation is the experience of sensing, all we know of a sight is the experiencing of seeing, all we know of a sound is the experience of hearing…. And all that is known of thinking, sensing, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling is the knowing of them. And what is it that knows this knowing? Only something that itself has the capacity to know could know anything. So it is knowing that knows knowing.’ [Rupert Spira]

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Note: excerpts from an earlier post titled: ‘it’. Photo: Buddha rupa on the my working desk and the view of the garden

darkness and light

Posted on April 22, 2016 by tiramit

POSTCARD #203: DELHI: I’m sitting on the meditation cushion in the darkness of a very long power cut. What else is there to do? The back-up system keeps one fan working at slow speed creaking around, then it goes out too and we fall into a quietness of no fans at all, no air con. Look out the window and no street lights either. It’s fortunate there’s still some cool air here, upstairs in the bedroom as I get settled down on top of a short pillar of cushions that sink into the soft bed and the top is just the right position for me and my folded legs. So, here we are, just the two of us, corpus et mente. The agility of Mind senses body mass, tubed liquid of intestinal gurgling, body heat and wind of breath gusting around. Mind sweeps around the limbs up to the head in a high acrobatic somersault then down to the lowest point as if called to do so, and loosens leg muscles consciously. Ease and empty space creep in; the facility of it pervades everything, enters, becomes, or seems to be already here… it was always here.

It’s as if I’m part the way through something not experienced yet. Access at some middle point with nothing to indicate what has gone before, nor what it is now, only the empty space of what it could be… but not going there; held somehow in the neutrality of the pause before anything or everything arrives. There is only this surging through, it seems, an on-going movement, then a flicker of physical sensation somewhere sends Mind off to that location to be there with that small consciousness. Then another sensation and Mind seems to be able to travel around and through the cavern of body, front to back, no barriers, rushing through the invisibility of body structure, into the elbows, up to the base of the skull, everywhere.

Attention is drawn to a zizzle-zizzle sound and I’m fully aware of what it is; the ever-present, insistent mosquito, whizzing past my ear, then back again: zizzle-zizzle. I can picture it in its slight weight, tiny wings-blur of movement hovering for one brief second near to the ear… in proportion, a canyon swirl leading deep inside the brain with hot cloud of air all around that mossies like; that inner ear smell, blood capillaries and aspects of the vast organism it feeds on, the great mountain that is the human head. I twitch in response and it changes course: zeeet. It returns again and I do the head twitch, then it stops zzt… we know it has chosen an unseen piece of skin to land upon, unfelt, and getting the needle-sharp proboscis ready, positions it at the chosen point of entry: Em… now you may feel a very small prick here… please don’t move, it won’t hurt at all…. Mosquito arches her small abdomen (yes only females do this); the treasured insertion tool pierces the skin and plunges down deeper and deeper searching for a blood vessel further into the redness…

I try generosity; okay, go ahead! Giving it away free like this, letting go of the intensity, but it’s not working. Fall sideways off the cushion, defeated by a mosquito. All the other cushions that were underneath me spring up immediately and I’m flat on the bed surrounded by cushions; vigorous face and body slapping, fingers ruffle through hair on head for a moment then it seems it’s gone away.

Eyes closed and there’s that wonderful light coming in at the edge of vision that I haven’t seen for a long time – a kind of unreal ‘heavenly’ warm creamy white moonlight light. Open my eyes again… where’s it coming from… any light on in here? Nope total black out conditions. Close my eyes again and lying flat, waiting… in a moment it returns. Not seen, indirect, it illuminates the space as if it were just about to appear. So it’s okay to be here lying on the bed, coping better in this position with the mossies circulating around breath exhale, and the mystery of the light that has returned, light in the darkness – darkness and light.

‘What’s happening now is the position that I’ve always wanted to be in, I was just trying to get here.’ [Prince, 2014]

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photo above: wave on the beach at Hua Hin collecting shells with M

time-lapse

Posted on April 17, 2016 by tiramit

POSTCARD #202: CHIANG MAI/DELHI: It looks like this tuk-tuk is moving but it’s not. Shadows of overhead cables create the effect. It feels like this present moment is just one screenshot taken in the making of a video about my whole life… well, I suppose it is, but if I hold everything on the pause button and examine my surroundings in detail, I find they’re not held in the moment I’m in. I’m distracted by two large birds zooming past my window, one bird chasing the other. If the whole thing was tracked by time-lapse photography, the trees could be seen growing up, extending their branches, leaves, closer to my window and blocking the daylight. The flight of birds would be like bees buzzing around in a cloud, and my movements in the apartment, a flash of shadowy comings and goings. Then stillness for the times I’m not there, only the sunrise and sunset light illuminating and darkening the empty living space.

The mind was in this time-lapse mode and I allowed a whole day to pack and tidy up the apartment. More than enough time, it was a night flight, so I’m moving in slo-mo action and at the same time watching a video posted by a Buddhist blogger friend. The packing was uncomplicated because it was all clothes for laundry – my washing machine stopped working the other day and the repairman will come after I leave (somebody will take care of it). So packing your bag is easy if it’s all stuff headed for the washing machine. Mostly it’s just getting it all in, squeezed into all the corners and close the bag with one all-round zip-zip-zip. Carrying 20 kilos of laundry across international borders and through X-ray machines and the officer stops me at the Nothing To Declare exit: ‘may I see inside your bag sir?’ “Carrying clothes for laundry into the country, are we then sir? [Aha, a likely story…]”

That didn’t take place, just a story inside my head with different versions of the same thing played out again and again. I got to the house, said hello to everyone and excuse me for a moment, into the laundry area and put the entire contents of my bag into the washing machine in one swift unpacking movement. Add detergent, select the program button, and close the door click! That’s it, done. The whole point of the journey was to get to the washing machine, you could say.

But, before that happened, M and her mom turned up to say good-bye. They brought with them a friend who is a masseuse, so I’m saying how about this pain in my head and neck? (PHN) and in seconds she had me face down on the bed, embarked on a full body massage, she’s on my back, twanging ligaments and tendons like guitar strings. I was in a daze, just enough time to shower and put on the only remaining set of wearable clothes, into a tuk-tuk for the airport – and there was no pain as such, just an easing because the ligaments and tendons’ twanging had stopped.

All the way through this, there were pictures in my mind of getting to the destination but having to correct these images because what I see is the old house, not the present house. I’ve spent more time since last November away from the place than living there. So I have to consciously delete these old remembered places and try to bring the present house to mind. Strange how you have to think things back to how they are right now rather than how they used to be. But the actual destination doesn’t show on the mind’s screen, hasn’t been updated yet… and sleep sweeps me away. Hardly noticed the arrival at 2.30 am, time brought forward by one hour and a half. I’m shoveled into the car by circumstances prevailing, and everything pushing me along in that direction. I get to the house, into the laundry area and put the entire contents of my bag into the washing machine in one swift unpacking movement. Add detergent, select the program button, and close the door click! And there’s this déjà vu thing about it.

“The timeless in you is aware of life’s timelessness. And knows that yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream.” [Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet]

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songkran สงกรานต์, संक्रांति

Posted on April 13, 2016 by tiramit

POSTCARD #201: CHIANG MAI: Impossible to not notice Songkran here, Thailand’s New Year festival, “sawat deepee mai”, Songkran begins today, 13 April 2016, in the Buddhist/ Hindu solar calendar. It’s also New Years day in many calendars of South and South East Asia. Songkran is the water festival, the act of pouring water is a blessing and good wishes. Before the festival begins, everything old is got rid of or it will bring the owner bad luck. Time to let go of bad stuff, ‘should auld acquaintance be forgot for the sake of auld lang syne.’ Wash away misfortunes in the past year, and welcome in the new year and a fresh start.

Thai people usually try to go back home and see their parents or their old relatives at Songkran. A tradition of bathing elders and asking for their blessing is part of the festival. Now I’m seen as a harmless old guy so I don’t get water thrown at me; a very small amount of blessed water is gently poured on my shoulder, or I sometimes get to sprinkle jasmine flower soaked water on the youngers who kneel and pray for fortunate circumstances in the coming year. All Thais go to temple in the morning and make merit by either giving alms to the monks or releasing birds, fishes or turtles from captivity – good deeds and the karma of it all.

But it’s mostly about water and the release from hot summer days. For young Thais and foreign tourists visiting here it’s a joyful water-throwing free-for-all. The streets are running with water to the extent that the Chiang Mai Government this year have started a small campaign to persuade the public it’s necessary to save on water. But not taken too seriously.

It’s also a time when people get reckless, accidents on the road the Bangkok Post today reports that so far, police arrested 20,094 people for drink-driving and 549 vehicles were impounded at checkpoints from 9 – 12 April. Owners of the impounded vehicles, 439 motorcycles and 110 cars, will be allowed to pick up their vehicles at police stations after April 17 when Songkran ends.

before after

Posted on April 12, 2016 by tiramit

POSTCARD #200: CHIANG MAI, THAILAND: The phone alarm goes off. I was expecting it to do that because somehow it’s been part of the dream I’m having… that thing about the order of events happening – was it before or is it after? Sweeping long-arm reach around in search of the alarm, slide it off with fingertip over glass screen and it seems like so much has happened since… who what where when how? My phone’s blinding white light in the silence fades and everything goes black again… the time is 5.30 am.

Something that’s new in my life these days is every morning, noon and night, I have to check the contents of two small carrier bags full of vitamin pills, pain pills and other pills contained in bottles, small, medium, large, with labels which tell me if it’s a ‘before’ or an ‘after’ – one of three events: breakfast, lunch or dinner. It’s the kind of thing that gives you a headache but enough said about that. I have to be up early enough to take the before-breakfast meds before breakfast and I’ve forgotten… my niece M stumbles into the room in a daze. I have to see if there’s anything she needs or wants and realize oh no, the ‘before’ meds so they have to be included in the ‘after’ meds. Okay, double-check, is it ‘after’ already, or is this still ‘before’? Something in me fights rationality with a reasoning that begins somewhere after the event and travels back to where things were around the time it started, just to see if that fits okay with how we’re now forming an idea of what this is about.

I have to get to grips with these medication bottles, fumbling with childproof caps in the alarming nearness of ‘seniority’… my goodness, is this a test! Select each capsule and put it on a small dish on the table. There they are, visitors from another universe. Then, swallow, swallow and swallow. Gulp and swallow again and stop to think, where are we now… did I take this pill already or have I yet to do that? If I’ve managed to do all this correctly then the rest of the day is easy. My niece M stumbles into the room in a daze and I have to see if there’s anything she needs or wants and it’s a good thing I didn’t forget about the before-meds.

There’s a dream I had once and wrote it down on a scrap of paper as soon as I woke up. The paper has been lying around for a few years, all scruffy and folded. Hard-to-read scribble so I better get it in print before it’s faded away in time. It goes like this: I’m standing at a bus stop, waiting for the bus. It comes, and I get on. Instead of ordinary bus seats, there’s furniture, sofas, armchairs, a small coffee table, TV, curtains on the windows, and it’s laid out like a room interior. I find a place and sit down. Other passengers on the bus are sitting up properly in unmatched furniture, everybody looking around for the person who comes to get orders for snacks and drinks. Nobody comes, there’s a long interval of nothing happening at all and after a while I realize it must be because the bus hasn’t left the stop yet.

At the same moment I remember I left my shoes outside the door at the bus stop. This is because in all houses in Asia you have to leave your shoes outside when you enter. Yes, but something about this worries me – is there enough time for me to go fetch my shoes in from the doorway before the bus leaves? I feel my body trapped by something unknown, unable to move… ok, I’ll just leave the shoes there and when I get off the bus I’ll have to take someone else’s (it does happen).

But there’s something not right about this idea. I’m searching and searching, so much and with such intensity it’s extraordinary and I become convinced that I must have forgotten what it is I’m searching for. This could be a problem but I’ve convinced myself I’ll be able to recognize what is when it appears… how will I be able to know what it is then if I don’t know what it is now… hmm? Well, we have not reached that point in time yet, so let’s see. Everything’s in a shambles and disarray inside this bus, chairs and sofas all facing slightly in the wrong way. Why is it like this? Must be the constant movement of the bus going along, furniture gets shifted around – we swerve round a couple of sharp corners, and everything slithers off to the side again…

Intuition is a suspension of logic due to impatience. [Rita Mae Brown]

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a buddhist’s sense of suffering

Posted on April 9, 2016 by tiramit

OLD NOTEBOOKS: CHIANG MAI: I’m lying with an IV drip in my arm and exactly why, I don’t know right now, but there’s also a laser beam directed into my vein along with the needle. So presumably, laser light is present all through the circulatory system as the chelation fluid enters my body. This special treatment may provide a cure in the long term for the PERMANENT HEADACHE I’m learning to live with… who knows, I’ll try anything, and at least they treat you well here. I’m laid-back in a comfortable soft TV lounger but instead of TV watching I’m looking out into a small garden with birds to watch and scribbling notes on a print-out from the first draft of this post… careful of the pain from the needle in my left arm.

I have to say, this is about my experience of headaches, discomfort and suffering so if you don’t like the thought of reading more about pain, click the button and get away from here now! But if you’re curious and interested in the buddhist sense of suffering, think of any kind of discomfort you have experienced and consider this: it’s the struggle to get away from pain that causes the suffering. The energy used in trying to get away from it just fans the flames and makes it what it is. And, because it’s habitual, maybe a lifetime of doing it like this, things just go on and on until I see the only thing that’s preventing me from letting go of suffering is that I’m still holding on to it.

This insight into suffering comes about, not by choice, but by allowing yourself to be in a no-choice situation – or maybe it’s like that; there’s no other way, absolutely no escape. And, what I’m talking about here will be familiar to sufferers of chronic pain, usually you do everything in your power to not even think about this kind of thing, so there’s a kind of unpreparedness about it. Unknowingly you’re caught like the proverbial rabbit hypnotized by the circling predator. Helpless, you give up, go stumbling towards the pain and unexpectedly, a door opens inside that place and there’s an easing. You discover it’s a mind thing; the habitual action to get away from it is the cause of the pain… it’s this vortex you get to in the end that leads to the discovery of the moment of easing held in the center of pain. I feel the moisture of an eye-blink, the absolute physicality of being here.

There’s a strange kind of time shift about it, it’s somehow not until after it’s happened you notice time skips a beat. It’s somewhere around here that the realization happens; ignorance is displaced by the knowledge of it, awareness floods in and there’s an acceptance of this new direction towards pain; you let it in enough to somehow find a release from it. It’s an immediate understanding that somehow you know you’ve gone through it, so you can’t be ‘held’ by it anymore There’s a real sense of achievement, you are bigger than it; there’s motivation, energy, freedom.

How to apply this? A conceptual understanding of the release forms; it’s more than an acceptance of the pain, it’s an embracing of the pain – an expanding awareness that pain is not a thing you carry along with you. Dispose of all the heaviness; it’s something to be travelled through. It’s this that lets it go (frees it). The knot in the string is undone. Can’t be explained, not a conscious understanding… just that something is changed inside the thinking process, a felt difference – “felt” rather than “thought to be” – and the suffering is suddenly not there anymore.

‘We learn how to let go, in the process of observing the consequence of our grasping.’ [Ajahn Munindo, Dhammasakaccha]

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