synonyms for startled

Posted on by

2

DE05_PAGE_1_DIW_DE_1642126ePOSTCARD #22: Delhi: “amazed, astonished, astounded, surprised…” looking for a word in the Thesaurus that describes the experience – but language doesn’t stretch that far. Diwali fireworks’ festivities are going on even though it’s after 22.00 hours and we’re just wondering how much longer before the fascination for fireworks fizzles out. I go for a look to see what’s going on outside. People in front of their houses, crouched over and busy with fireworks set up on the pavement; random explosions, fire crackers like machine-gun fire. It’s a war zone with no bullets, children laughing and running around in the smoke and glare. Fireworks displays are quite beautiful seen from some distance away, but here at ground-zero, the high volume, bang-whoosh-crackle is alarming; a struggle to be calm.

Back inside the house with all the windows closed because of the smoke and Jiab is talking about the Buddhist upekkha teaching: balance, equanimity, the state of being calm in the midst of difficulty; equilibrium, or eequeeleeblee-um, as she says – a Thai articulation. This kind of balance leads to freedom from passions, desires, likes or dislikes. Sounds nice and I go through to sit on the meditation cushion for a while to see if I can discover this balance, be with my reactions to the sudden noises and focus on the nature of what’s actually happening.

Watching the breath in this way, things seem to be getting quiet, and I’m just getting settled into this sitting meditation when suddenly there’s a colossal explosion, BOOM… so loud it sets off a car alarm down the street. The glass, brick and concrete of the room resonate like a huge drum. Startled, is not the word – it’s the nearest thing to jumping out of your skin I’ve ever experienced – automatic response. Confusion in time… what happened first? Was it before it happened that it seemed like I saw, in the darkness of mind-space, this amazing bright sky-blue colour appearing behind something like panels of intense black, falling away – parts of the structure that had been holding it contained – falling away in pieces, collapsing, and more and more of this lovely sky-blue colour is revealed.

Sivakasi_fireworks1The word: bardo comes to mind; the blue light of the skandha of consciousness in its purity, the wisdom of the dharmadhtu, luminous, clear, sharp and brilliant. I’m not saying this is what happened to me, it was more like a totally unfamiliar state, the mind doesn’t know what to do – what does it resemble, what’s it like, how can it be categorized? I’m amazed, astonished, astounded, surprised; looking for a word to describe it, but there’s not anything. Fireworks chase away the demons; papañca, proliferating thought, conceptualizing and the constructed ‘self’. The impact of it happening propels it all right out of here – bang!

 ‘… the Brahma-viharas are the great removers of tension, the great peace-makers in social conflict, and the great healers of wounds suffered in the struggle of existence. They level social barriers, build harmonious communities, awaken slumbering magnanimity long forgotten, revive joy and hope long abandoned, and promote human brotherhood against the forces of egotism. The Brahma-viharas are incompatible with a hating state of mind…” [Access to Insight]

————————-

Upper image link to newspaper reports: www.thehindu.com/more-fire-incidents-in-delhi-this-diwali
Lower image link to: Diwali wikipedia page

diwali: an inner light

Posted on by

8

DharmaPOSTCARD #21: Delhi: This year’s 5 day Diwali festival begins on Sunday 03 November. Diwali is about celebrating the awareness of the inner light; that which is beyond the physical body and mind – pure, infinite and eternal. The light of higher knowledge that dispels the ignorance masking one’s true nature, not as the body, but as the unchanging, infinite, immanent and transcendent reality. With this awakening comes compassion and the awareness of the oneness of all things. This ‘higher knowledge’ brings bliss, ananda. In the same way we celebrate the birth of a child – the birth of our physical being – Diwali is the celebration of this Inner Light. The story may vary from region to region, but the essence is the same – to rejoice in the Inner Light (Atman) or the underlying Reality of all things (Brahman).

The name Diwali, a contraction of deepavali (row of lamps), involves the lighting of small clay lamps which are placed outside the house and kept lit all through the night. It’s about the triumph of good over evil; there are fireworks to drive away evil spirits going off all through the night – not possible to get much sleep – any lingering old thoughts of attachment are blasted out of their dusty little corners. You can’t really pretend it’s not happening… it’s a social event, parties going on until late at night

KevalajnanaFor Jains, Diwali marks the attainment of moksha (nirvana) by Mahavira (a reformer of Jainism) in 527 BC. Interesting to note that the Buddha and Mahavira were contemporaries, and there’s an odd similarity between Mahavira and Buddha; google their names and you’ll get all kinds of info. Both were princes and renounced their kingdoms at the age of 30. Mahavira’s father’s name was Siddhartha (Buddha’s name), and both attained enlightenment. They both practiced extreme asceticism, but the Buddha went on from there to develop the Middle Way. Jains believe in a soul, but for Buddhists there is no self, no creator of the Universe, it has no beginning and no end. There are many other similarities and I’ll write a separate post about that one day.

Dayananda_SaraswatiDiwali is also celebrated by the Arya Samajists as the death anniversary of Swami Dayanand Saraswati. They also celebrate this day as Shardiya Nav-Shasyeshti. Diwali begins on the thirteenth lunar day of Krishna paksha (dark fortnight) of the Hindu calendar month Ashwin and ends on Bhaubeej. The Indian business community begins the financial year on the first day of Diwali (Dhanteras). Diwali is an official holiday in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Mauritius, Guyana, Trinidad & Tobago, Suriname, Malaysia, Singapore and Fiji. Diwali was given official status by the United States Congress in 2007 by former president George W. Bush. Barack Obama became the first president to personally attend Diwali at the White House in 2009.

————————-

Note: this post was created with excerpts from the wikipedia page. Upper image by Manish Jain  spiritualartwork.wordpress.com. Middle image: illustration of Mahvira, a reformer of Jainism. Lower image: Swami Dayanand Saraswati

gone is gone

Posted on by

4

Nepalese Buddhists monks pray outside thPOSTCARD #20: Delhi: Suddenly awake at midnight, the mind is busy with something… seeking gratification in the realization that I don’t have to search for anything anymore – thus lost in the seeking for it. Trying to remember the dream from the parts of the jigsaw that are remaining. Maybe, as I’m looking for the lost pieces, I’ll see what the story was about – the logic of the dream… In every new circumstance, reassembling the parts of who I am, and nothing seems to fit; searching for a ‘self’ to be satisfied with what’s going on – or dissatisfied with how things are; or upset, or angry, confused, depressed, gloomy or sad

How did I get to be here? Arrived yesterday morning – flight from Chiang Mai to Bangkok, then another flight to Delhi; a cabin-pressured, air-conditioned day at 37,000 feet, cruising speed 600 mph; up and down again – twice. I’d been awake since 4am Thai time, fell asleep at 7.30pm in Delhi then woke again at midnight – the predicament of the dream, staring wide-eyed in the half-gloom of city night, deep purplish-black night-vision. Halloween season, all doors and windows shut to keep the ghosts out, enclosed in the concrete and steel of the present moment. Quiet, except for the refrigerator noise; hmmmmmmm… masking out frequencies. When it stops, I become deaf in the silence. Small random sounds… the bark of a dog:

Death is drawn to sound
like a slipper without a foot, a suit without its wearer,
comes to knock with a ring, stoneless and fingerless,
comes to shout without a mouth, a tongue, without a throat.
Nevertheless its footsteps sound and its clothes echo, hushed like a tree. [Death Alone by Pablo Neruda]

Listening to the whisperings of stealth; a small lizard is investigating the kitchen, the tiny clink of something against a plate, rustling in the small trash bin on the counter… I switch on a few lights and it’s gone. Start up the laptop, feel more comfortable with nocturnality, more at peace with the electric light of night, shadows and darkness. Draw all the curtains closed just before dawn, hermetically sealed. The day is an exhausting awakeness. I shall stay with the night, be a vampire; halloween and ghoulishness..

Deathlessness and the buddhist undead; mind hovering in a memory; the context of an event, somewhere between remembering what happened and wondering what could have happened after that – how it might have been and how the story unfolded from there. The thought exists in the mind, then it’s gone. Curiosity, where did it go? Carefully take everything apart to find out where that thought went… everything irredeemably dismantled. It’s gone. Gone is gone; when I’m gone, I’m gone and everything else will be going on. Just the same. Comforting, somehow, to shift the focus away from the confines of ‘me’ and out into the surroundings.

‘… we are only dust. Our days on earth are like grass; like wildflowers, we bloom and die. The wind blows, and we are gone – as though we had never been here.’ [Psalm 103, 14-16]

————————-

Reference to Psalm 103, 14-16: TheWannabeSaint.com  – G  R  A  T  I  T  U  D  E –
Upper image: remembering this time last year when we went on the tour of Buddhist holy sites [Photo Link]
This post inspired by a website I recently discovered: Buddhism for Vampires

where I’m calling from

Posted on by

9

IMG_0213POSTCARD #19: Chiang Mai: M came to visit for the day, my Thai niece aged 9yrs, and her mum brought a bag of pa tong ko (Thai donuts) she got in the Saturday market. And just before we ate them all I remembered to take a photo [click this link for recipe]. But I’m getting ahead of myself, it began quite early this morning. I open my eyes and there’s a sound, a Skype call – where’s the phone? Stumble out of bed, follow the sound… phone has slid down the side cushion on the sofa, singing and buzzing in there; hello? It’s M, hello? Her video appears – hello, hello? I can see the top of her head, she’s watching a YouTube video at the same time as skyping me.

Where are you now Toong Ting? She calls me Toong Ting, a remnant of her baby-talk days. I tell her I’m in the condo, arrived last night from Bangkok; this is what it looks like, where I’m calling from, then slowly move the camera-phone around so she can see the interior of the room.

What you do there? She speaks English like text messaging – maybe social media is how she learned? I tell her I’m not properly awake yet and that’s why my hair is all mussed up.

What’s mussed-up mean? I tell her that I was sleeping, just woke. But it’s difficult to hear what she’s saying, I need to adjust the volume control. Where’s the clicker? Can’t see well with these glasses, I’ll have to hold the phone so I’m able to see her face on the screen then put it to my ear to hear her voice – she’s laughing because there’s my big ear in close-up, filling her screen. Laughter…

Why you do that Toong Ting? The conversation lasts about a minute. She asks me, Can I come stay with you today, mummy go out, OK? I say yes; see you soon, bye-bye.

Shower, dressed, wash dishes, tidy up and in 1 hour, ping-pong! door opens, M is scooting down the corridor, running around the rooms and jumping on the sofa: yaaaaay! Her mum gives me the pa tong ko and some of M’s items in a bag and other food things, asks if I’m sure it’s okay… yes, of course, and there’s the handing over of responsibility with a few last words of caution to M and bye! Mummy is gone.

We put everything on the breakfast table, and taking the photo of the pa tong ko reminds me about the problem with the phone-camera earlier, with the sound – not finding the volume control and I tell her about this – can she fix it for me? M holds the phone in her small hands then clicks the little button with a tiny pointed finger.

I feel heavy and clumsy by comparison. She tells me I need to change the ringtone… so let’s choose one together, okay? There’s a long list, the names read like a poem; apex, beacon, by the seaside, chimes, crystals, night owl, playtime, presto, radar, radiate, stargaze, summit, twinkle, waves and we go through them all, one after another, like a strange inter-related melody; a breathtaking journey through the diverse world of heavenly and celestial, twinkling ringtones.

Which one you like Toong Ting? I’d like to make a choice but it’s like a kind of hilarious madness to me, they’re all good… M makes her choice and I’m wearing my glasses to see how she’s doing it. It’s this that causes her to quit the ringtone selection as the discussion moves round to my recent eye operation.

What the doctor do? M comes close to my face and looks at my left eye, carefully, then looks at my right eye. She’s a bit scared of the thought of it, yet kinda fascinated when I tell her about making a hole in the eye and sucking out the lens shloooorp! then putting in the new lens folded over to get it into the hole and it’s made of plastic, so it opens out flap when it’s inside and lies down flat.

I see her small face and almond-shaped eyes absorbing the story into consciousness. It’s a mirror I can see myself in. The ‘I am’ feeling – the sense of ‘I-Amness’. All the way through one’s life, the constant. It’s the same today as it was when I was 9 years old. Absolute subjectivity.

‘Consciousness veils itself from itself by pretending to limit itself to a separate entity and then forgets that it is pretending.’ [‘The Transparency of Things’, Rupert Spira]

We take other photos of the rest of the food things brought by M’s mum and here they are:

1. (below) Kao nyaow: glutinous rice cooked in banana leaves

IMG_02152. (below) Ground nuts, the original version of the salted peanuts we buy in a can. They’re actually a purplish-green colour.

IMG_02163. (below) Thai kanom: a glutinous rice paste flavoured with panyan

IMG_0214

————————-

References to Absolute Subjectivity taken from a Ken Wilbur video: Subject becomes object.
The title of this post: ‘where I’m calling from’ is taken from a collection of short stories by Raymond Carver

the attributes of self

Posted on by

2

110520131818POSTCARD #18: Bangkok/Chiang Mai flight: They paint a face on the nose of the aircraft, the ‘cute’ concept – a Thai version of Japanese kawaii かわいい . It looks like a bird because the shape of it is beak-like but it’s recognizably a human face wearing sunglasses. Personifications, masks, fictional characters with human attributes respond in a childlike way to a world full of fear and joy. Goldilocks and the three bears finding the Buddhist Middle Way by trial-and-error: the first try is too hot; the second try, too cold; the third try is just right. Why not? This is a non-serious, one-hour flight; no sooner have we departed than we arrive. Smiling doll-like stewardesses in yellow costumes have just enough time to come up the aisle with a light snack in a paper bag for everyone, back down again to clear everything away and we’re descending into Chiang Mai.

Slightly bumpy, due to weather conditions, the vibration causes the luggage compartments to shake and creak for a moment. Sounds like something nautical; the rattle of rope harness striking the mast of a sailing ship… searching for something it resembles – something to account for this phenomenon of flying above the clouds at an incredible speed. Maybe I’m seeing the journey from Bangkok to Chiang Mai as if we were driving over something solid, bumps caused by an uneven road surface; a highway in the sky, an imagined bridge that spans the distance, 373 miles from there to here – a huge curved span in the sky. Logical mind attempts to create an explanation for it, based on what’s known, a figure of speech, something to help me ease back from contracting around the uneasiness, the unknown… that edgy feeling. Without the metaphor, all I’m aware of is tremendous velocity and a sense of vulnerability. The immediacy of the moment sweeps away all thought-constructs like the ground is gone from beneath my feet. Mindfulness of breathing, deeply in and all the way out…

Further into the descent I become a little deaf, it feels like being underwater, and no amount of swallowing or blowing of air into sinus cavities seems to clear it. Near to landing there’s the sound of the hydraulics, out go the flaps, down go the wheels and the earth rises up to meet us; 300 people contained in a structure the size of a building colliding with the surface of the Earth at 200 mph. A great yawning abyss of existential anxiety; I need something to hold on to – but there isn’t anything that’ll prepare me for such a colossal event; the roller-coaster experience. Aircraft wheels take the weight, first one then the other and the deep lurch, sink-down/bounce-back – for a moment it feels like we’re going to go out of control and disaster… then it’s okay.

There’s something about it being in a public context, we’re all in this together, and the sense of a letting-go of something tightly held: woooooo! The small ‘self’ is seen and relinquished; there’s nobody there… just this unattached feeling that couldn’t happen in any other circumstance. The Buddhist cessation – no words for it, consciousness doesn’t normally reach that far. No person, no identity. Before the Greeks created the Buddha image we know and accept today, there were only symbols, a riderless horse, the empty seat… footprints left behind in the place where he was.

 ‘… that dimension where there is neither earth nor water, nor fire nor wind, nor dimension of the infinitude of space, nor dimension of the infinitude of consciousness, nor dimension of nothingness, nor dimension of neither perception nor non-perception, nor this world, nor the next world, nor sun, nor moon. And there, I say, there is neither coming, nor going, nor stasis, nor passing away, nor arising: without stance, without foundation, without support [mental object]. This, just this, is the end of stress.’ [Ud 8.1]

————————-

spaciousness of being

Posted on by

2

IMG_0085POSTCARD #17: Nontaburi, Thailand: Here in this large house, surrounded by a garden of tall trees. Monsoon season, heavy rain all day, all night – oceans of frogs all around, hundreds of them, l’amour, croaking throughout the night in rising and falling waves as I sail off into sleep. Still raining next morning, then it stops about 10 o’clock, and the frogs are quiet now – I don’t know where they can be… submerged in mud with a bubble of air to breathe in? Frog heaven. A time for quiet reflection, the actuality of just being here; conscious experience. I’m alone in an empty house, walking around the hallway, bare feet on cool marble tiles; pita, pata, pit, pat, pata, pit, pit… stop and look out the window; everything is totally wet out there.

IMG_0170Conscious of cold feet – an unusual feeling in Thailand, it’s usually hot all the time. The skin sense (touch), contact with the world, consciousness of a physical object. Standing on the cool floor – the sensation. And the mind sense (cognition), ‘I like this coolness’, consciousness of a mind object. A pleasant wanting… hovering in a created sense of ‘self’. A whole lifetime taken up with the body/mind’s responses, reactions to the ‘outside’ world. Preoccupied with the doing of it, actively engaged with it; this is happening to ‘me’. Everything I see, hear, smell, taste, touch, feel and think, received through sense organs mostly situated around the face, means the head is thus spinning around constantly to engage with whatever it is; the object of consciousness.

‘A life guided by desire, a life contracted to the mind’s thirst, seldom has the spaciousness of being. That pure awareness which wants nothing, which yearns for nothing, which simply takes on the shape of whatever form comes within its natural spaciousness.’ [Stephen Levine]

There’s consciousness of thought and consciousness of no-thought; consciousness of the cognitive function triggered by a simple curiosity: what is going on here? Unattached consciousness, released from sensory experience – awareness of the awareness, seeing the seeing, knowing the knowing. One way or another, conscious experience is what I’m writing about; an all-inclusive thing. I try to be minimalist, writing as if it were text messaging. No real ‘story’, no sequence of events; it lacks content, barely enough to hold the reader’s attention. It just evolves, becomes something, gets broken down again and rebuilt. Often it feels like once it’s been taken apart, it’s not worthwhile putting it back together; everything in a state of disarray, prepositions and verbs scattered around, ‘a small tribe of semi-colons nibbling at my ankles’, no subject, no object; no actual finished state.

After another couple of days of just ‘me’ and the frogs in the rain, and I realize it must be Sunday because Naa J and Naa M arrive that evening with a take-out dinner. We talk for a while and they spend the night. Early next morning I hear the monks outside. Go to take a look, rain has stopped and it’s dry again, takbat, offering food. Generosity, J and M have this kindness. An hour later I come downstairs, and they’re gone…

‘Awareness could be said to be like water. It takes on the shape of any vessel that contains it. If one mistakes this awareness for its various temporary forms, life becomes a ponderous plodding from one moment of desire, from one object of the mind, to the next. Life becomes filled with urgency and the strategies of fear, instead of lightly experiencing all these forms, recognizing that water is water no matter what its form.’ [Stephen Levine , Ondrea Levine: Who Dies]

IMG_0179————————-

Note: ‘a small tribe of semi-colons nibbling at my ankles’, quote from Sue Vincent’s Daily Echo/ Sharpening The Quill. Thank you! (link in text)
Related post

nothing in particular

Posted on by

0

IMG_0132aPOSTCARD #16: Bangkok: Waiting for my number to be called… the figure 109 printed on a square of paper the receptionist gave me here at Rutnin Eye Hospital, outpatients department on the 2nd floor. People everywhere, very crowded today and only one seat available facing the white door that leads to examination room number 5. Fortunate because it’s where I’m supposed to be – at least I’m in exactly the right place. Yes, but there could be 108 people in front of me… an endless time to wait; nothing to read, nothing to look at, just watching the time go by. The second hand spinning round on a clock on the wall, designed like the hospital logo; it looks like an eye – someone has taken care to create this icon; it’s childlike, friendly, elegant.

3305480I’ve been struggling with poor eyesight for years and, since the surgery, seeing the world through ‘new eyes’ means anything happening in the field of vision immediately calls out for attention; a movement, a colour – it has to be noticed. The world is a great diversity of things. I see a tiny patch of colour at the bottom of the door about half an inch wide, where a piece of the surface of the door panel has chipped off, probably caused by moving some heavy equipment into the room and the door was struck in the process. It’s been repaired with something a slightly different colour and the coloured patch seems luminous, out of context with its surroundings… there’s also the glint of something like mica, something metallic. For a moment I’m immersed in this although it’s not important; it isn’t anything, there’s no attachment to it. It’s just a coloured patch, yet it’s fascinating. These days I’m often in the curious situation of having this intense visual awareness of an object and no subjective sense that it’s worth paying attention to at all; mind is not inclined to engage with it. This is just an ordinary mark on a door, nothing in particular; I have no desire for it, no pressing need to possess it. There is sensory data input by way of the eye and eye-consciousness; receiving the world through the six sense-doors: eye, ear, nose, skin, tongue and cognitive functions, without the idea of it happening to ‘me’. All that I’m aware of is a quiet presence, seen in peripheral vision and knowing it’s there.

 ‘… habitual desires manifest and condition awareness into a discriminative mode that operates in terms of subject and object held to exist on either side of the six sense-doors. These sense-doors open dependent on contact that can arouse varying degrees of feeling. Feeling stimulates desire and according to the power of desire, attention lingers… personal aims and obsessions develop and give rise to self-consciousness. That self-consciousness, mental or physical, once arisen must follow the cycle of maturing and passing away. When the mind looks into the sense of loss and comprehends (this) truth, the awareness is no longer bound by discrimination, the separation of subject and object is no longer held and one does not feel trapped behind or pulled through the sense-doors. There is freedom from desire… no personal image is created; there is nothing to lose, a sense of gladness, uplift, joy and serenity.’ [Ajahn Sucitto]

————————-

Lower image: Rutnin Eye Hospital logo   Note: Ajahn Sucitto’s poetry link: dhammamoon.org

story within a story

Posted on by

4

IMG_0095aPOSTCARD #15: Rutnin Eye Hospital, Bangkok: I’m back in the outpatients for a routine eye examination after surgery – the peppermint green and menthol coloured room, etched glass and white ceiling. Receptionist gives me a number, 109, and I look around for a seat. It’s crowded in here today… are all these people in front of me? It’ll be a long wait. What to do to pass the time when I can’t read? I need glasses to read and have to wait 3 weeks for a new lens prescription; the eye has to settle after they take out the stitch – okay, let’s not talk about needles and eyes… the eye of the needle? Easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God… they don’t make it easy. For ‘rich’ substitute ‘greedy’ lobha and it makes sense.

Generosity is the antidote for the ‘holding-on’ disease; fixating on a thing we think we need to make us happy. Apply the sense of generosity to the problem of being a compulsive reader and I should be able to let go of this reading habit – see what it’s like to do that. For backup I have the basic Kindle 6” with the font set nearly to maximum; digital words, the physical substance of the book is absent – switch it off and there’s nothing there. I like the emptiness of it, yet a whole library could be on this small device that fits in my pocket. Yes but I forgot to bring it with me today… terrific, so I have to learn how to sit in this waiting area doing nothing for maybe a couple of hours.

Language creates fiction – a story carried over from a former life, kamma, an extension of another story written long ago, once upon a time…. a story within a story, in which one of the characters in the narrative will pause and say, ‘this reminds me of a story…’ and goes on to relate a story inside the current story that the reader gets so immersed in the starting point is forgotten and it becomes just part of the whole; a vast structure of inter-related, nested stories enclosed by the original, frame story. Lost in the samsara of forgetfulness, caused by the holding-on disease, greed, tanhã (craving) passed on from former lives; seeking gratification in whatever sense object presents itself and wherever it finds rebirth.

‘… if I were born again as a fruit fly I would think that being a fruit fly was the normal ordinary course of events, and naturally I would think that I was a highly cultured being, because probably they have all sorts of symphonies and music, and artistic performances in the way light is reflected on their wings in different ways, the way they dance in the air, and they say, “Oh, look at her, she has real style, look how the sunlight comes off her wings.” They in their world think they are as important and civilized as we do in our world.’ [The Essence of Alan Watts, Vol. 4: “Death”]

————————-

unforeseen

Posted on by

8

IMG_0126aPOSTCARD #14: Rutnin Eye Hospital, Bangkok: I just had eye surgery for cataracts and there’s a protective eye shield with cotton wadding taped over my right eye, but I don’t remember anything about it. I remember lying on a gurney in the operating room, and recall chatting with the anesthetist as he’s putting the needle in my arm – then suddenly I’m back in my hospital room with the eye shield taped over the eye and no memory of it at all. I feel normal, the only difference is I know that a newer version of part of the eye mechanism has just been installed; I’ve had an upgrade. But the eye has to stay covered today, so I can’t see anything, except when the nurses take off the shield every hour and I get a brief glimpse; they give me eye-drops then it’s covered again. A great flood of liquid in the eye, slight taste in the mouth as it drains through the tear duct into the back of the throat; swallowing my tears, gulp, gulp…

They take the eye shield off next morning. I get dressed, go downstairs to the outpatients department and through to the exit. The décor in the waiting area is in shades of lime green and ice blue, colours are amazing. Unexpected. There’s a completely clear perception of distance for the first time in many years. Fascinating. I’m distracted by colour and movement at the edge of vision, face turns in that direction, curiosity – an involuntary response. Head spinning like a child or a small animal, noticing all kinds of things. Sense organs filter incoming information. In my case, visual data enters through implanted intraocular lenses (IOLs). I see the world and assume it exists exactly as I perceive it, but I know the lens implant has, to some extent, created my version of the world; perception is subjective, reality is a construct in the mind. I can see a wide range of colours where insects see ultraviolet, reptiles see infrared, and cats and dogs see the world in only two colours. Viewed in this way, the world is suddenly endowed with great mystery; ask the question: ‘what is reality?’ and it takes you to a different place entirely.

Out of the exit, wait for a taxi, on to the highway system and step into a world that looks like it’s been Photo-shopped, high resolution, multi-pixel display. If there comes a time in the future when I’m no longer able to see it in this way because the novelty of it has gone and consciousness doesn’t regard it as special anymore, then I can return here, read this post and remember how wonderful it was…

‘Normally we human beings assume the world ‘out there’ exists just as we perceive it (by way of eye, ear, nose, tongue and physical contact) but if we consider these sense organs, it must become apparent to us that the world ‘out there’ is really dependent on our particular modes of perception. For instance, the human eye limits conditions, by its very structure, the objects we see. It is well known that a bee can see, as a colour, ultraviolet but we have no idea what such a colour looks like nor, of course, can we find any words to describe it. It follows therefore that our sense organs being differently constructed from that of a bee (or any other non-human being), our world “out there” is not necessarily the world as it really is.’ [Phra Khantipalo, ‘Buddhism Explained’ 1965]

————————-

Note: Claude Monet had treatment for cataracts that left him with poor vision. He agreed at age 82 to have the lens of his left eye completely removed. Light could now stream through the opening unimpeded and he began to see – and to paint – in ultraviolet (Water Lilies series). [Link]

uncertainty (mai nae)

Posted on by

0

IMG_0141POSTCARD #13: Bangkok: Raining heavily at the airport, poor visibility on the highway into town. Traffic moving steadily through the downpour, a large spray of water hits the windscreen, sploosh – like driving through a car wash. Reminds me of Scotland, wild, wet and windy; weather is unpredictable. You expect it to be one thing but it’s something else instead; uncompromising in its insistence that it is what it is – and not what you think it is. Thai language/cognition is like this, so different from the West; making assumptions based on the Western model doesn’t always get you where you want to be.

I explain to the taxi driver where I want to go, saying there are two ways to get there: he can go on the tollway but better to take the turn that gets us on to vipawadi. We come to the place to make the turn, but the driver doesn’t go that way; we pass it…. It takes a moment for me to see what went wrong: he’s thinking the vipawadi turning is the way I don’t want to go, not the way I want to go. All it takes is one small slip in the logical sequence of the language and I get the opposite of what I intended. Ah yes, well, sometimes it’s like that. No holding on unduly to things you expect to be ‘right’ when they prove to be otherwise. After two decades in Thailand, I suppose I’m used to it; a familiarity with not quite knowing what to expect. ‘…many problems are the result of us expecting that there should be a solution.’ [Ajahn Tiradhammo]

Thai semantics are a bit elusive, the language doesn’t stretch the way you’d expect it to. Anticipating reactions to a request, statement or question – not the best way to go. A structure created by words to explain a concept and the assumption is that the listener understands what I’m saying in the way I mean it to be understood, but it doesn’t work like that. Words are just reference points; they’re sort of out there, ready to be shared with everyone. People interpret them in the way they understand it best. Usually it’s the meaning I’m hoping for, but not always. I try to be minimalist, the complexity of it reduced as far as it’ll go. Allow the selected words to carry the meaning and if it’s misunderstood, try to find an indirect way to approach the problem by letting go of the idea that it’s somehow ‘wrong’. This is ‘the land of smiles’, a cultural  tendency to not confront the issue – we become so focused on the ‘should’ we forget the ‘maybe’. The journey takes the time it takes, through the floods and downpour, but we reach the house okay, of course. The sky clears. Rainbows, green leaves in the trees drip crystal drops… soon after that the rain stops.

‘We can easily get caught up in thinking that life should conform to some definite plan. But by keeping a close connection with the truth of uncertainty we can soften the resulting frustration and negativity when the plan doesn’t unfold the way we think it should. We may even gain a clearer understanding of the real nature of plans: mere concepts about possibilities, rather than concrete programmes of actualities. Then whenever we find ourselves having to make plans we do it in pencil with an eraser in hand, and with the clear understanding that many other possibilities are available as well.’ [Ajahn Tiradhammo]

————————-
‘mai nae’, in the Thai language, means ‘uncertain’ – the living expression of the fundamental Buddhist teaching of anicca, or impermanence [Ajahn Tiradhammo]