uncertainty

Posted on March 11, 2012 by tiramit

Switzerland: The bus stops. People get off, others get on. You see the people who got off going away and the newcomers as they come in, looking for a place to sit down. Bus moves off again and the landscape shifts through these huge bus windows. Here in Switzerland there are mountains, of course, and there’s the lake, so there are these steep winding inclines leading up from and leading down to the lake lying there at the lowest point. It can be a feeling of vertigo; down and up continually. The next bus stop is near the top of the hill and I remember this place from other times. It’s beside one of these huge walled mansions with heavy black iron gates as high as the trees and a sign on the gate says “Chiens méchants”. From my slightly higher elevation on the bus, I can see over the wall. But nothing is revealed, a few trees and cropped lawn. I think Chiens méchants probably means “guard dogs” with pluralized adjective after the noun. There’s a French/English dictionary in my bag of English teacher’s requisites:

méchant, e: adj. nasty, malicious, spiteful; (enfant: pas sage) naughty; (animal) vicious; (avant le nom: valeur péjorative) nasty; miserable; (: intensive) terrific.

Seriously unpleasant dogs, a disincentive to burglary. What goes on inside that house? Nobody knows. The bus moves on. More houses the same. Presidents and Statesmen, Princes and Kings, and others of extraordinary wealth have their various residences here, cluttered with objects of great value. I feel entirely different from the occupants of that guarded house. Inquiring self doubt takes over for a little while, some kind of investigative sweep, infra-red night vision cameras, land mines detector searching over the surface of the ground: tread carefully! Is there any unhappiness I need to be careful about out there?

The bus moves on and suddenly I’m feeling uncertain, not sure. There’s a tight holding-on to everything I feel ‘sure’ about, thinking that this will dispel the uncertainty, but it’s the tightness that makes things feel even more uncertain – holding on to ‘certainty’ just creates a fear of losing it. Better to open up to the whole thing… the great uncertainty of existence. With that, I notice a wave of relief sweeps over me.

For some reason, the persons living in that house are extraordinarily possessive about what they have. Me? I’m less committed economically… things could be a bit more finely tuned than they are, but one thing I do have is the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha. Since discovering the Triple Gem, I’m permanently changed. Can it be correct? Sounds like a contradiction in terms: ‘permanently changed’… inexorability, such a nice word. The bus goes on in a bumpy, slightly rough sort of way, everybody inside here holding on to straps and poles attached to parts of the interior as it sways from side to side and down into the landscape towards the lake.

“If I feel sufficiently threatened in certain situations, a fear comes up and there’s an experience of contraction, a rigidity kicks in, and when that kicks in, possibilities become limited. My mind doesn’t want to look at the myriads of possibilities, doesn’t want to float around and feel what’s actually going to fit. In that state of contraction and limitation it wants to get something and feel sure. But this doesn’t benefit me and it doesn’t benefit other people. On the other hand, when we are able to remember that we don’t know what is going to happen, that we don’t know for certain, then there is a relaxation, a releasing; an opening up and a trusting, a reconnecting with a trusting relationship to life. Life is uncertain but that is just the truth. We don’t have to be in a perpetual state of fear because of it. … When the tendency to grasp out of fear or insecurity arises, if we have prepared ourselves, we hold back and just wait, remaining open and at the same time in touch with the sense of ‘not sure’”. [Ajahn Munindo ‘Unexpected Freedom‘ page 173 (pdf), page 161 (book)]

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Photo by Louk Vreeswijk

birds on the balcony1

Posted on January 29, 2012 by tiramit

Switzerland, December: Got back from Thailand the other day, still jet-lagged. Writing this because I see, out on the balcony (7th floor), there’s a pigeon and it’s just sitting there, with folded wings, in a small plastic waste-paper bin looking at me. What’s it doing there? At first I think it’s just sitting there because it’s feeling cold or it’s not well. And I don’t pay any attention to it. There are always these birds around on the balcony – it’s because I’ve been feeding them of course.

But how long has this one been there? I didn’t notice it when I arrived…. I look again after a while and it’s not moving away from the seated position. Just then, its partner, (husband, wife… mate?) it’s mate, turns up, on the balcony. It has leaves and grass in its beak looking quite picturesque and part of nature here in the urban setting. Could be an excerpt from a National Geographic movie watched by airline passengers at some hour in the darkness. But I’m saying that because I’m still jet-lagged.

So, looks like it’s decided to build a nest there, in the Christmas tree pot container. How strange and funny! Some time later, and I’d fallen asleep, woken up and it was a different time in the day: what’s the pigeon doing now? I go to the window and take a look. It’s still there. I don’t have a camera so I’m making a sketch of it. It’s nesting in the waste paper bin that was the container that held the Christmas tree pot (with earth and roots). There’s still a piece of red Christmas paper wrapped around it, stuck with tape and the actual Christmas tree is standing next to the nest with one solitary dangling, gold-coloured, paper-wrapped chocolate bell decoration thingy I forgot to remove when we took off the Christmas lights and put the tree out on the balcony. Then went off to Thailand and left it like that.

A day or so goes by and the odd thing is I forget about what’s going on, or I didn’t think that the bird would have laid an egg by this time – I was thinking … I don’t know what I was thinking. Anyway, I was just kind of gazing at it from the warmth of my kitchen, out there on the cold balcony and suddenly the bird got up, hopped on to the balcony rail and flew away someplace: hmmm, where’s it going now?

After a while, I slide open the balcony door and go out to have a look at the nest more closely, and, “oh!”, there was this little white egg lying there. An existential moment. There it was, kind of lying on its side in an uncompromising sort of a way. It suddenly seemed alive! Just there… waiting for the parent to come back.

I hurry back inside the apartment, quietly closing the door and try to occupy myself, thinking is this what it feels like if you’re going to have a baby? No that’s silly. But I kept going back to the window to see if the parent bird had returned: come on parent bird, you should be sitting there, the egg needs to be kept warm! The last thing I need is a neglectful parent, and slipped back into my state of nurturing memories of a childhood that was not all it could have been – which is something I do from time to time. Of course the bird came back, or one of them did, I can’t tell which is which. It settled down and everything was allright again. I felt comforted.

And that’s how the Pigeons came to be on the balcony. Jiab was not overly pleased. There were discussions soon after they came. And later more discussions about how they were beginning to come inside the apartment – in the summer months with the windows open, it was too much. She was completely right! I should never have started feeding the birds out on the balcony all those months ago.

But anyway the nest was there and I couldn’t really chase the birds away. So, I’d taken on a commitment – like feeding the stray dog that comes to the door? And was reminded of something I’d read about the Bodhisattva Vow, by Venerable Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche. I don’t mean it was the Boddhisattva Vow to look after the pigeons but I’ve included a quote (below), also a link to the original because it’s such a joyful piece. The pigeon saga came to a satisfactory conclusion in the end. But not before all kinds of small encounters and interesting things I learned about how birds fly and just what it’s like to be a bird. I’ll write more later…. [link to: Birds on the Balcony 2]

‘Once you have taken the vow and fall away from it, then it is very harmful. For example, if you feed a stray dog that comes through your door one day, it will probably return the next day. You continue feeding the dog on the third day and the following days but one day decide, “Well, I’m not going to feed that dog anymore.” The suffering and disappointment you are inflicting on the poor animal is tremendous, because the dog is expecting to be fed, is hungry, and becomes disappointed and sad if you stop. You impose so much physical harm on that dog that is stuck in the habit of receiving your help, because you basically promised to feed him every day. It’s like that with the vow of a Bodhisattva: If you take the vow and make the commitment to help all sentient beings, if you promise to protect them from suffering and pain, to bring them permanent happiness – regardless if only one, two, a hundred, or thousands of beings, everybody, all sentient beings – you promised to bring permanent happiness to all of them. Imagine how disappointed they are going to be if you turn away!’ [Conscientiousness – Bag-yöd. Instructions on Chapter 4 of the Bodhicharyavatara by Shantideva]

Jet-lagged on 7th Floor (3)

Posted on January 15, 2012 by tiramit

Switzerland, December: Wind is gusting around this tall building. Sitting on the cushion at 4.00 am. All beings, for thousands and thousands of years, have been experiencing this same moment we’re in right now. It’s always been like this. No different. I’m jet-lagged, arrived from Thailand yesterday, feels like I just stepped through a door, the other side of which is an island of light and the Ajahn is just there, completely bright with colour, pale tangerine-brown robes and bright blue sky.

I’m situated somewhere in an accumulation of hours that have not arrived yet, awake half the night and eventually got out of bed and dressed at 3.30 am, brushed the teeth, sorted out all kinds of stuff in the kitchen but quietly due to the fact that it’s still night-time and I’m aware that people all around are sleeping. We’re on the 7th floor of an 8 floor block with 2 apartments each floor. That’s 16 residences of sleeping people, say at least 2 people per habitation. That’s 32 persons altogether under one roof and roof garden up there on level 9 with trees and an unknown number of birds sleeping on branches – or trying to sleep in the buffeting wind. I have this vision of all the apartments underneath me, transparent floors, the fabric of the building is see-through and these habitations telescoped below into the distance of 7 levels to the ground floor. I’m walking on atomic particles, I am atomic particles….

Now 4.30 am on this blustery January morning – only fools and horses are awake, maybe the birds. So very quietly going about my business in this soft cozy atmosphere of the middle of the night and carefully washed all the dishes with the detergent used for washing woollen clothes by hand. Forgot to buy proper dishwashing liquid and domestic affairs are going downhill since Jiab went to Cambodia.

The smell of the perfumed detergent triggers images from some place, somewhere I can’t identify. Somehow it seems to remind me of something – or is it that I’m searching through the memory to find a reference? A precedent? And in the process, all kinds of really deeply buried memories of smell are stirred, olfactory hallucinations? The nostalgia of smell, sometimes I get it when somebody sits next to me on the bus who’s used an unknown shampoo or some combination of hygienic smell compound that I have no olfactory cognition of and it seems to remind me of … memory goes off in search of that.

What is it? The mind flashing through memories and unknown images appear in the process. Sensory input but no source memory. I’m in limbo. This is the kind of thing that really jumps out at you in the heightened state of jet-lag awareness. Perfumed detergent has made it obvious the normal self is nothing but a construct – if there’s unfamiliar sensory input, the memory retrieves ‘close match’ files and goes on searching forever. It’s coming on so strong I have to lie down for a while. The mind is in a sea of memories: I don’t know what that smell is, operating system on standby.

Amazing wind actually rattles the patio window pane with a ‘bang’. Up here on the 7th floor level, you get to fully appreciate the word: “velocity.” Looking out through the glass into the dark cold night. The balcony gets gusted, blasted by winds, cleans out all the corners. I think of the birds on level 9 swaying on their, perches, claws firmly attached – that’s why they have these very long toenails…. (at the time I didn’t know about the pigeon nesting there, see next post)

Scraps of paper, a pen, drinking straw, and the bottom lid for a flower-pot fly around in balcony space, over the side and are just gone in 7th floor space, no gravity. Necessary to rescue the watering can before it takes off like Dorothy’s house in the Wizard of Oz: “… I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” And stepping out there on the balcony at 4am, bare feet, ‘Somewhere, over the rainbow…’ wearing thin night-clothes has a transforming effect. ‘Cold’ is not the word. This is not Thailand at 38 degrees centigrade.

Things only appear to exist? There is this natural tendency to investigate and an all-out purposeful search into the phenomenon of ‘no self’ to find out exactly who or what sees there is no ‘self’ will yield not much at all, of course, because there’s nobody there to see it. I asked Ajahn about it in Thailand: if everything without exception is “non self” including the “I” that carries out the investigation, how do we know it’s there – or not there. Where does it all lead to? And without hesitation he just said, “enlightenment,” held my gaze with these penetrating blue-grey eyes. That kind of stopped the conversation for a moment.

Then he went on to say something that started me thinking it’s like being too focussed on the ‘search’; you discover you’re not getting very far with this because what’s holding you back is the intensity of focus on seeking (not finding). The whole thing, being an illusion, is likely to change, and will fade away as soon as the conditions that support it cease. You can be sure this will happen because the conditions that support those conditions are just the same, they’re subject to change and will cease. A house of cards. It’s like, from this place in time and space, I can’t see it clearly but I’m pretty sure there’s nothing there at all, just the appearance of things.

I find a book on the shelf that says something about this and shortly after that fall asleep on the sofa for a number of hours.

“We may say that when a chair is removed from its place, there is the state of chair-being-absent at the very spot from which the chair has been removed from its place. Indeed, the state of chair-being-absent is always there whether the chair is there or is removed from its place. We look at the chair but fail to see the state of its being absent, which is nowhere but the same location. In a like manner we should understand the reality beyond the sensory world… we must look at the world of objects itself but see through interior perception.” (Tan Ajahn Buddadasa link)

Meditating at 600 mph

Posted on January 1, 2012 by tiramit

Bangkok/Zurich flight: I think there are about 350 men, women and children seated inside this lightweight metal cylinder with wings and gigantic engines, surrounded by high frequency white noise. On East to West journeys (Asia/Europe) at this time it’s just one long night. Food and drinks finished about 2 am. Now there’s the twelve-hour journey to get through; an uncomfortable, restrictive environment. The sound generated by the engines and air pressure and my hearing mechanism are all one and the same thing, inextricably linked. A shrill voice inside me wants to scream at exactly the same pitch as the engine sound, and so become silent in it. Aware that I could go down the road of wanting things to be different from what they are and, in the end, come to see that it is precisely this that causes the suffering, I give up – just no getting away from it. And it’s somewhere between that relinquishment and the sincere desire to be free from suffering that the thought arises: there must be some other way of doing this? And the Third Noble Truth comes walking down the aisle and says in a friendly voice: ‘Yes, there is some other way of doing this.’ Just the thought of it gives me encouragement and after that the flight experience becomes interesting.

Focus on breathing, there’s the presence of noise and I let go of thought. Familiarity of breathing and focus, mindfulness; sitting in this small space, aisle seat, environment of the plane and we career headlong through space at 600 mph, altitude 37,000 feet. Strangely, it feels the same as if I were sitting on the meditation cushion on the floor, terra firma. Einstein’s Theory on Special Relativity tells us everything inside this enclosed capsule is relative to itself, as it would be on the ground. I’m aware we are heading in one very specific direction at an immense speed. With eyes closed, the breathing tells me it’s possible to sense this direction we are headed in. If there were seats facing the opposite way, I could try sitting there and watching the breath to see if there’s a difference. But aircraft design doesn’t provide for that kind of investigatory requirement. They like to have everyone facing the same way.

Trying to get this and other things properly into context causes me to fall into a dreamless sleep for some hours and wake with the announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, we are beginning our descent to Zurich… ensure your seatbelt is securely fastened and table folded away….’ Then plunging down through rain clouds and down again through many layers to a space where dimly below I see the surface of the planet, December atmosphere, everything is grey. Then down again into a layer of cloud, visibility decreases, the air seems like it’s obscured by fine cloud filters. Can’t see a thing outside the plane window. Aircraft drops, altitude is lower and the light becomes less and less. Then break through into an empty space between clouds, drop down into another layer and emerge into a sky free of clouds, high above Switzerland, snow-capped mountain peaks, and at ground level, the plain, way down there, everything looks dull and grey.

Arriving in a different time zone; here before you know it – takes longer to adjust to the new global positioning than it did to get here. My eyes are still dazzled by the brightness of Thailand, unaccustomed to the dim grey light of the Northern Hemisphere. How can people see here?

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[‘11,000 metres below the sea, single-celled “bottom dwellers” exist in pressures equivalent to 50 jumbo jets piled on top of each other.’ Just getting on with their lives, pleased by encounters with small particles of food.]

Jesus and ‘Churchianity’ (1)

Posted on December 18, 2011 by tiramit

Christmas, Bangkok Airport, Departures: Bags packed, got passport and ticket – taxi to the airport. Checked in, immigration, security and step through into the glitzy duty-free with people and music circulating. Compelling christmas carols with full orchestral backing and we are swept away to a tinsellated heaven realm. The next music track is a syncopated, off-beat, acoustic guitar melody support for: ‘… the ho-lee bible says, mary’s boy-child, jee-sus christ, was born on christ-mas daaay…’ Enter coffee shop area as we reach the main chorus at full volume: ‘Hark Now, Hear The Angels Sing…’ waiters have that look: the thrill has gone, dulled minds, christmas carol track loop playing in their dreams.

When I was a kid, I’d ask people about Jesus and didn’t ever get a satisfactory answer: ‘Jesus was the Son of God’. I accepted it, but didn’t understand. That’s how it was and maybe it’s why, in later life, I started to search for a real spiritual path. And eventually I became a Buddhist; all’s well that ends well. And it’s only recently I’ve been able to see links between the Jesus Teachings and Eastern religious experience (Advaita Vedanta) so that brings the Jesus story very much closer to me.

I open the laptop in the middle of: ‘… the cattle are lowing, the baby awakes…’, internet connection, Google, Wikipedia, I find Brahman/Atman and substitute the word ‘God’ for Brahman and Jesus for Atman then edit out all Advaita Vedānta references, now try that and see. “… away in a manger, no crib for a bed…” Flip through all kinds of pages then discover this very interesting paper about Neo-Vedantic Christology given by an Indian clergyman: Rev. Dr. K.P. Aleaz in 1994.

It’s a series of short contributions from members of the Ramakrishna Mission Order; including S. Radhakrishnan (President of India 1962-1967), and I find something here that is pretty critical but reflects the feeling about the Church I had in school days. And it’s reassuring to read about it now and know I was probably not alone in having the thoughts I did, back in those days:

‘Christianity considered the human person (Man), to be a sinner, a worm and that is why it could not understand the message of potential divinity implied in his (Jesus’) saying, ‘I and my father are one’. (Swami Vivekananda)

I’m reading about how Jesus’ pure religion of heart (was converted into) ‘Churchianity’. It goes on to talk about ‘renunciation’, interesting, I find I don’t feel comfortable with the word: ‘renunciation’ in this context, associations with guilt, Christian conditioning. I only recently rediscovered the meaning of it in the Buddhist sense: ‘renunciation’ means joyfully giving things up, letting-go. That helped me leave these old associations behind. It goes on to say:

‘The West has distorted the religion of renunciation and realization of Jesus into a ‘shop-keeping religion’ of luxury and intolerant superstitious doctrines.’ [Swami Vivekananda]

That was in 1994, we’d say rampant consumerism today. And I see it all around me here in the shopping area, Jesus as purchasing initiative. Where did it all go wrong? When I was a child, nobody really studied Jesus’ Teachings, it was the domain of the clergy. The general public, believing it on a superficial level just muddled along and no questions were asked. And it occurs to me that the Christian clergy today, vicars and priests, those who are thinking about this realistically, must have difficulty sleeping at night?

‘… the universal message of Jesus which comprises the ideas of the indwelling divinity, of divine grace, universal ethics and spiritual realization was distorted by the Christian Church through fettering it in cast-iron dogmas of innate vileness of human nature, ‘the scape-goat’ and ‘the atonement’, physical resurrection and the second advent, earthly kingdom and the imminence of the Day of Judgment which are purely tribal in their scope.’ [Swami Ranganathananda]

Well, that kind of remark would cause the cups and saucers to rattle a bit at the vicar’s tea party. Rev. Dr. K.P. Aleaz reassures us, towards the end of the paper:

‘Today, the lost universal message of Jesus can be regained with the help of Advaita Vedanta; the Christian dogmatic assertions no more need distort the meaning of the gospel.’

Interesting how the word ‘salvation’ has an odd heaviness about it – my Christian conditioning again. The dictionary says: preservation or deliverance from harm, ruin, or loss. I think it’s about having Wisdom. If you have Wisdom you won’t fall into the deep hole. If you do fall in, Wisdom will get you out. Trust in that. Swami Abhedananda points out that, from the Church point of view:

‘Salvation is the redemption from sin through faith in the atoning sacrifice of Christ, the Son of God. But Jesus did not teach the idea of vicarious atonement; what he taught was ‘~~the kingdom of~~ Heaven is within you’.

As I see it, Jesus is saying: Heaven is within you. Simple, and that’s all there is, we aspire towards that Truth. On the other hand, the Church is adding something extra, something manipulative about atonement. It’s easy to see it now and, I guess, it must have been something they just went along with in those days. Another thing is, you will have noticed I put a strikethrough in: ‘the kingdom’ so instead of: ‘the kingdom of Heaven” and we can just say “Heaven” instead. Here’s a very nice Advaita quote that I like a lot:

‘God is pure knowing itself. God is beyond everything that can be conceived or thought about. Words cannot describe it. God is beyond space and time. God is infinite Being, infinite Consciousness, and infinite Bliss.’

The Rev. Dr. K.P. Aleaz is saying the non-dual relation that Jesus had with God the Father is something all of us can have, ‘through the renunciation of the lower self.’ (giving up the illusion of ‘self’ emerging from the Five Khandas.) It means humans can become ‘God’-conscious. Each soul has this latent potential and ‘… the resources of God which were available to Jesus are open to everyone. Christ’s statement, “behold ~~the kingdom of~~ God is within you” refers to the divinity within the human person.’ (my strikethrough) The important word here is ‘divinity’, Jesus was teaching the subjective realization of human divinity and therefore subject/object unity: ‘… “I and my Father are one’, ‘God is within you’ and in declaring himself as the son of God (Jesus is) inviting others to be sons of God too….” (Bhawani Sankar Chowdhury)

The Advaitist view is that the self of the human person (Atman) is ever united with the Supreme Self (Brahman); God always shines as our Inmost self and we can realize it here and now. Christians can understand this, Buddhists can too but Theravadins have a problem with the ‘anatta’ and ‘atman’ issue – if it were in the context of formless realms, maybe ….

The Christmas carol tracks have moved on to ‘Sti-ill, the night, Holee the night, Shepherds watched their flocks by night…’ I get up to leave, laptop in carry-on bag and head for the Gate. It’s a 12 hour flight to Zurich, hopefully I’ll get some sleep; economy class, not much legroom. Let’s see, conditioned experience, same old thing. Cold and snow at the other end. Goodbye everyone in this restaurant and this place, blessings and, ‘jingle bells, jingle bells …’ follows me all the way until I don’t notice it, it’s gone, and I’m on the way to the Departure lounge.

Original source: Rev. K. P. Aleaz Neo-Vedantic Christologies

[Link to related Post: Jesus and Advaita Vedanta]