Tag Archives: anatta

found objects

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Library - 1POSTCARD #194: NEW DELHI: Even though everything we had in the old house was numbered, labelled and the whole thing carefully folded in on itself and squeezed into a removals truck with a set of instructions on how to reassemble, when we got to the new house it came out backwards, and the assembly instructions must have gotten lost as it was going in. Thus everything had to be emptied out on the floor in the search for the instructions, and that’s how it began to look like a vast three dimensional jigsaw of an instant house-kit, abstracted. So that when the assembly instructions were found, we weren’t interested in them anymore because we’d already found the proper screwdivers and L-shaped keys that fit into these holes in furniture assembly and started to put bits of it together by eye and what looked right. More things were discovered, ‘objets trouvés’, a collage, arising from found objects carrying that strange familiarity… traces of a former life.

And that was when I remembered something from long ago and far away; I used to be an easel painter, had exhibitions, sold paintings, thought about being a rising star in the World of Art. Then something happened – I don’t know what, an insight into how things arise and pass away. Everything just turned to dust, vapourized, reduced, distilled into the elements, thoughts created by Mind and the words required to describe it started to run out. Anything still standing after the event was taken to pieces, carefully numbered, labelled and the whole thing folded in on itself, then squeezed into a large box that I’ve carried around with me ever since and never opened… until now.

I cut through the old nylon ropes and slit around the edges of the box, sealed with parcel tape and old labels saying FRAGILE and sticky stuff from years of airline stickers for check-in luggage. The lid opens with a creak and a great volume of pandora’s creative playfulness is released in a soundless explosion. Well, that’s done it… no going back now. Brushes, pallete knives, tubes of acrylic paint, acrylic medium, glue gone hard, unusable adhesive tape, bits of measuring devices. and pieces of artwork. Boxes of charcoal, ink and yellowed pencil drawings for a painting I remember I never started – wouldn’t it be fun to go back, after all these years, and pick up where I left off?

IMG_2665bI don’t know how many years have gone by, lost in the dream. Woke up one day, look in the mirror, hair gone white; the Rip Van Winkle effect – all of the elders are dead now and I’m grateful for everything I have that belonged to them (strangely addressed in the past tense). I’ve forgotten the ‘me’ that used to hold these brushes, squeezing these tubes of vermillion, cadmium yellow, it’s been such a long time, so many journeys extended out over thousands of air-miles, hours and days maybe weeks of looking out the windows of an airplane somewhere in the clouds and the world coming in through these eyes but seeing it like it’s not ‘me’ personally that it’s happening to, more like it’s an extension of what’s out there.

A sense of the air and spaces inside things I never even thought of until now. It’s possible that this is the right time to return to it. Less words more imagery, it’ll change the direction of the blog. Let’s see, I’m going to take a look into that pandora’s box, maybe find out what it was that caused things to shift as they did and what can be retrieved from the wreckage… got to go now. Sayonara bloggers, more later….

UPDATE: CHECK OUT THE NEW PAGE OF MY ARTWORKS, GO TO HOME AND LOOK FOR THE PAGE TITLED ‘ART’ UNDER THE HEADER IMAGE

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all that remains

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13966960783_a630225cb8_bPOSTCARD #188: DELHI: Early morning in an airport coffee shop space while Jiab is checking-in for her flight to Mumbai. Looking around and up above at this steel glass and tiled environment. Sometimes all I can do is find a quiet place and just sit. Look inwards… it’s an unreal world. There’s this pain in my head, but I have a magic medicine pill that sends the pain away. It’s gone… and a part of my mental functioning gone with it. Where’d it go? I think it went into another room in my head where there’s a party going on all the time day and night. I can hear the music beat throbbing constantly, but can’t recognize the music being played, no worries, the main thing is I can’t feel the pain; besides, it’s more like stress than pain. Sometimes I have no stress at all; sitting alert and mindful like the Buddha. Other times I feel the energy of that stress so strongly it brings attention to the thin membrane separating me from the pain – it could rupture any moment now. Wait and see if it’ll be this time?

Allow all things to pass, continue to sit like the Buddha upright in a chair, quiet and alert to everything that’s going on. A few tables down from me in the coffee shop there’s a teen-aged girl with head and body hunched over her iPhone device all I see is the reflected color glow from the screen on her face. The colour of her eyes sparkle with light that’s continually changing; flashes of blue, pink, and everything goes orange. She is speaking with her friend, loudspeaker on, so she has her hands free to work on the keyboard and smoke her cigarette secretly, and here’s the thing, she’s writing messages on her phone and speaking with her friend and smoking a cigarette, all at the same time. Multi-tasking on social networking FB, twitter, SMS, very noisy texting noise: poo, paw, poo, paw, pee, pay, pay, poo ; digital tones I feel are as sharp as auditory stabs on this frequency that all digital sounds, phone-ring-tones and alerts seem to inhabit.

The voice of her friend at the other end is really LOUD. Must be she’s calling from another party environment similar to the one going on in my head, all kinds of party noises – in fact I can’t tell the difference… what’s happening to me? Is she calling from inside my head? Disregard that thought. She has to shout to be heard: Yeh, I know her, ahna got natheen to say to her, that back-stabbin sawn offa beech. The girl here says something really loud in agreement and they seem to acknowledge this observation as being cool. Maybe I can seek what peace there is in the space surrounding this noise, up to the ceiling structure, the bigger picture, the larger space within which all this is contained, and already the sound of the girl’s phone feels like a tiny diamond or sparkling jewel.

The intrusive lunge of the girlfriend’s voice into my space again brings me back to the way things are; it’s a razor sharp Samurai sword. Language syllables shrill and piercing sound waves suddenly slice my head and upper body into pieces scattered around. The sense of bien-être quivers and gasps in a kind of death. These are the battles fought in the mind.

Jiab comes with her cabin luggage on wheels behind; small oriental, everything compact and a unit of information, we say goodbye at the security line and I make my way back. Out through the crowds and into the car, squeezing through traffic against the flow and wondering why then realizing we are making a sudden U- turn.

The whole landscape is just gone, pieces and parts of objects recognizable from faraway events in history when huge towers tumbled to the ground in seconds, as if all the concrete and steel had turned to dust instantly. The population just can’t figure it out, the psychological effect… it’s too huge. Time to move on from here. Only clouds of dust now, the effect it has on everyone is the same as the metaphor; devastation is all that remains.

If one is a true learner of the Way, one does not search for the faults of the world, but rather speedily applies oneself to attain genuine insight. If one only can see with perfect clarity, then all is completed. [Rinzai]

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Photo (source) showing one of a number of Buddha ‘laps’  at the Ayuttaya site Thailand. Many thanks also to WordPress blogger: ‘of rhyme and reason‘ for the photo
~   G   R   A   T   I   T  U   D   E   ~

nothing

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buddha

OLD NOTEBOOKS: DELHI: Sitting quietly on the meditation cushion, together with this headache that’s moved in recently, and I’m wondering if it’ll quieten down too – sometimes it does. At first it’s like there’s this energy of time and space moving through me from the past into future in continuously transforming evolving forms – but it’s more than that; internal processes happening by themselves – there’s no ‘me’ involved here, because I’m engaged with this swirling mass of headache and also just on the edge of understanding it’s like that when the whole thing becomes transparent – there is no beginning/no end… and it all slips into what you’d call the bigger picture.

So the meditation becomes more of a: let’s see now where are we at? (the headache and me). The outside world is not outside it’s inside too, every time I look/watch/see an object, it’s internalized. The brain creates a customized picture of it for me – and we all agree – who says the sky is blue, it could be a fantastic different color?

The pressure points on the cushion and floor where my legs are folded, and right knee supported, also parts of the body that are in contact with the surfaces of mat, form sensory data which reach the mind and give me balance, and I slip into this physical position like a hand fits the glove.

But then later as I’m walking through the rooms, the thought that I am as much inside as outside is a bit unexpected. The music I listen to becomes me, it is who I am, the alto saxophone sounds of Paul Desmond enter the hearing mechanism and I’m immediately on a 4D wave of melody floating out the window, I just take it for granted.

Then I smell lunch, go through, and eat the outside world. It enters my body. It goes to create flesh, blood and bones. Fingernails and hair grow. It’s quite an experience. The headache is a long swirling blue veil unravelled all around and caught in gentle aircurrents, of the saxaphone music – you could say it’s not getting the attention it deserves. Then all this becomes momentary, the headache disappears again and there’s the curious awareness of nothing. An experience of ‘open moments’, nothing in itself – but how did that happen? Where did the subject go? Suddenly there’s nothing in ‘here’ where the ‘me’ ought to be.

Virtue and the mind itself shows the way to go; the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path. Everything else in this great mass of no-thingness is an intuitive part of the whole, while functioning as form which is what we are on one level, everything else is too, and here we can study and learn so much from each other, while all of the world is comprised of particles that become increasingly smaller until their structure is formless space.

The knower and the known are one. Simple people imagine that they should see God, as if He stood there and they here. This is not so. God and I, we are one in knowledge. [Meister Eckhart]

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Source for Header Image
Note “open moments” comes from a post in the blog:A Buddhist Year titled, ‘Time”
Music I was listening to: ‘Polka Dots and Moonbeams’ by Paul Desmond:

becoming

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1024px-Siddharta_Gautama_BorobudurOLD NOTEBOOKS: DELHI: I have this headache that lives with me now; wake up in the morning and it’s there… dreamy half-formed images like wings of birds fluttering around in front of the headache then I see it’s becoming something and try to correct it so there’s no ‘becoming’. As soon as I do that, there’s no headache – wonderful except, I fall asleep again; the mind assumes, since there’s no becoming, no subject is focused upon, no actual thing (nothing) happening, this must mean sleep; okay, goodnight. Zzzzz….

Wake up again, and stumble out of bed, the whirr and buzz of the mechanism of headache that still hasn’t managed to become anything yet is taken into the hot shower. Then dressed in scarf and warm clothing because it’s cold here in North India this time of year. Downstairs from the third floor holding on to the hand-rail in an almost spiral staircase makes you dizzy to look at it and balancing the head as best as possible in a stable position because now the headache has become a snooker ball rolling around and crashing into the walls inside a sphere at the top of the vertebral column.

Stone steps with shiny-soled slippers that slip. Spinning around, everywhere in the mind thoughts arise; there’s always a subject searching for an opportunity to ‘become’ something. Is this what holds beings in the cycles of rebirth? Curious idea; a possibility… so it must be to do with non-becoming – allowing it all to ‘become’ without anyone ‘becoming’ it. Let’s see, how does that work? Stop here for a moment and think about this.

Am I down yet? Which floor am I on now? Having to be careful about not slipping, how many landings are there? I’m losing my sense of direction. But this idea gets my attention: active thought arises from somewhere in the midst of a great cloud of inactive thought. I can decide to not-become a thought just allow it to ‘become’ by itself.

So it’s possible to be focused on two parts of a thought at the same time… there’s a kind of transparency about it, a ‘becoming’ but no one who ‘becomes’. There’s no become-ee; a headache but no ‘headache-ee’ – it doesn’t belong to ‘me’. There’s awareness of the headache, but no awareness of to whom it is happening, there must be a larger awareness that includes this – an awareness of one thought that includes awareness of another. There’s something that allows me to consider this; I’m seeing it from somewhere else.

Yes this must be it, I’m at the ground floor now, and these stairs are difficult I get lost in them every time – don’t know if I’m going up or down. The mind searches for this awareness in some place completely unknown. Where is it? The space that’s unattached: the space-in-between. This takes me to another awareness that’s quite distant from the headache. It’s like it’s happening somewhere far away.

The mind is the canvas on which our thoughts are projected and is part of consciousness. Our body is a holographic projection of our consciousness. [B. M. Hegde, cardiologist and former Vice-Chancellor Manipal University]
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Source for header picture. Note: this was developed from an earlier past titled ‘non-becoming‘. the structure of it is almost exactly the same, only difference is I had no headache in those days. So I was inspired to apply the same strategy in dealing with the headache I have now and it’s been quite succesful.

the buddha today

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100-reclining-buddha-in-isurumuniya-vihara-anuradhapuraOLD NOTEBOOKS: The images of Gautama the Buddha we have today portray him as a person from the educated class, someone we might recognize as not unlike many of us who have the ability to see ordinary life at a distance, without any immediate financial concern about things in general because we live in a society that takes care of itself (as it was for Gautama before he left the palace). Or maybe we’re desperadoes, adventurers with a special genius and exceptional skill and energy that creates equanimity in times of brinkmanship and it’s the sheer confidence in our ability that allows us to see this truth; the suffering of the ordinary worldling is caused by wanting things to be different from (other than) what they are, and never managing to reach the desired state.

There is another a form of Buddhism that reaches the ordinary people of India through the Ambedkar conversion from the socially oppressed Dalit caste to Buddhist, in the hope of a better life. This has become a political issue and some would say the Buddha was an activist attempting to create social change – I think most would agree that, sadly the politics of the situation has confused the Buddha’s original teaching. The Ambedkar Buddhists are the fifth largest religion in India. The Dalit Buddhists I have met, those with  university degrees at doctorate level, are actively searching for a way of integrating those parts of the Buddha’s original teaching.

In the West, people have to structure their lives around employment. Their innate ability to be happy is exploited by commercial strategies and a fleeting, temporary happiness has come to be built-in to the system. People can’t escape from that unless they step out of the social momentum they’re in and this means there’s the risk of losing everything. So they’re trapped in the system.

As Pankaj Mishra says: “Buddhism has always attracted the elite of whatever society it has traveled to, partly because you need to have traveled through a certain experience of materialism in order to arrive at the sense that there is something problematic about desire and longing, how they don’t lead to happiness, and more often than not lead to unhappiness. If you are still struggling to fulfill your fantasies of wealth, power, status, Buddhism is less likely to appeal to you.” [‘An End to Suffering’ Pankaj Mishra‘]

Maybe we are seeing some similarities here reading this while stretched out on the sofa with an iPad at this very moment, giving some thought to the situation of Gautama leaving his comfortable home and stepping into the unknown, in search of a spiritual life. In Thailand there’s the option of living in the monastery for a period of time in order to follow the spiritual path. In fact you can spend your whole life there. This kind of choice is held in high regard by Thai society. In the West we are in one way or another committed to our earning capacity. There is virtually no spiritual option of this kind in the system – other than self-study and the support from nearby Buddhist monasteries. A Google search for Theravada monasteries in USA and other parts of the world will explain that anyone is welcome to share in the one meal of the day, free of charge, the activities, Dhamma talks in the monastery and accommodation can be arranged.

“You should live as islands unto yourselves, being your own refuge, seeking no other refuge; with the dharma as an island, with the dharma as your refuge, seeking no other refuge.” [selected from the Buddha’s final words]

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Note: some parts of an earlier post included here: https://dhammafootsteps.wordpress.com/2012/08/22/the-way-out/

a lake of sleep

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lord-buddha-golden-idol-widescreen-desktopOLD NOTEBOOKS: Take all my meds out and put them on the table one by one; colors and shapes like planets from another universe. Swallow, swallow, and swallow. Have to open my case from the journey to get here. Bend down to find the zip, forgetting about the baseball in the head… rumble, crash forwards against the inner front of the cranium – bash! It’s the headache that lives with me, okay, it’ll settle in a moment.

Zip open the case and it seems like it’s totally occupied with a flat pillow gradually inflating to its normal size – a small pillow but it’s soft and I have to have it everywhere I go because other pillows, I find, are cruel and lead to sleepless nights with headache problems all through the next day. Fling that on the bed. Inside the case it’s still a little cool from the aircraft luggage section. How strange. All these ironed T-shirts folded flat, enveloped and layered inside this cuboid capacity; memories contained, waiting to escape from the case. Find some nightclothes and put them on – balancing the baseball in the head. Get into bed; cold in North India, and the heating we have is inadequate, but there is always the HOT-WATER BOTTLE! Yay! Jiab calls it the hot-water bag and the connotations are strange, which she doesn’t realize of course so I find I’m unable to say why and it’s left as hot-water bag. Winter is so short here I keep forgetting to explain.

Get in and lay down. Baseball rolls to the back but I can feel the meds building a thin soundproof wall around it that means I can’t feel the pain. Staring up at the painted ceiling, the solitary light bulb of a rented house it has no shade – must do something about that. Thinking about this and all the other things I have to do, want to do, would like to do. Thinking about things I thought about already, last night, the familiarity of thinking about it. It’s just there; not attached to it, not caught by it and free enough to see it, like Dolphins diving down and up to the surface and down below again. It’s not the content of thought; it’s the context, the awareness of thinking, the IS-ness of it. Watch the in-breath, the out-breath…

What’s going on here? I try to be in present time and the mind goes quiet. This quietness means the “now” just comes along by itself. It’s about the awareness of it – the human condition, investigating this…the meds are having an effect, the pain is gone. The Teaching on sila (virtue) is something that makes me feel good about myself, there’s the sense of being sure I’m on the right track. It means I can focus clearly, get things properly sorted out. Now I can close my eyes and get comfortable, thought processes that maintain themselves hesitantly, and other things without substance appear and fade away. If I don’t reach out for the next thought, there’s nothing there. The darkness is filled with light, moonbeams just at the edge of vision. “We cannot see we are filled with God because we are filled with a concept of God” That reality is beyond description. Best to leave it undescribed.

“The same intelligence that grows trees from seeds,
that lets birds fly,
that waves the ocean
and gives birth to new stars – that same Intelligence
also breathes your breath, beats your heart,
and heals your wounds.”
[Annie Kagan]
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Note about the quote, I don’t remember where I found out about Annie Kagan, it was one of my WordPress blogging friends. Please let me know if you recognise it, thanks

high altitude pain

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259982750POSTCARD #187: Bangkok/Delhi flight: The journey is by way of a series of crowded corridors connected like tubes in a telescope, one inside the other, becoming smaller and smaller, reduced to squeeze us into the self construct; the way we are and the lifetimes lived with it. The ‘me’ in the body, the voice in my head, the narrator telling the story. This is how it is… and already there’s a sense of distance from the world (‘this’ was). Keep moving, we pass through security as if it were the eyepiece of the telescope, examined through a lens; cameras watch us standing in line. We are subject to causes and conditions… shoes off, gentlemen remove belt, anything in your pockets Sir? Take off watch please. Enter the X-ray cubicle, stand with legs apart, arms extended, wind blows clothes aside and hair ruffled. I’m suddenly aware the viewer behind the lens can see everything underneath clothing. Shoes on, thread belt through loops, pick up watch and things. Collect computer from tray put it back inside bag and get organised. Step out of there, aware, balanced, easy breathing and it’s okay right now (except piercing high frequency air-conditioning sound, waiting for pain to arrive but it doesn’t come), sensory mechanisms function without my involvement. Continue with the slow foot shuffle (high pitched voices, mysterious kerfuffle), but we’re all moving along here. I’m like an antenna receiving data; seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching and cognitive functioning receptor, waiting for things to happen.

Hand passport to officer, look at the camera, facial recognition, the self I inhabit… this is who I ‘am’ (the same as everyone else ‘is’). The officer stamps twice, thump… thump (the sound of it), walk through and out to the duty-free extravaganza (piercing light enters neural pathways), suddenly blinded for a moment in the reflected glow of gold watches, jewelry, the made-up lips and eyes in vivid, max-pixel pictures, videos of popular celebrities, cosmetic dentistry, facial alterations, images in unflawed focus and good-looking lighting; commonplace works of art, masterpieces of trivialities. I could use the television analogy; I’m watching this channel and all the other people are watching their channels – and if there were separate channels for every single being in the world, that would be the correct analogy.

We’re in another tunnel sloping downwards, becoming smaller at the end where painted ladies wait, show me where I have to go; turn right into an even smaller tube with seats on either side of a corridor, and I’m in my numbered seat. It’s made to measure, low ceiling, knees touch the seat in front, elbows touching the guy next to me, hairy arms. It’s like being on a bus at night, except less space. No view from the window, can see only the blank video screen at eye level, 18 inches in front of me… everything is too near and a feeling of blackness. Try to read my book on the Kindle but the words appear strange, three-dimensional, as if embossed on the screen, the lines of text are not straight; flowing in a gentle curve. Then I feel the pain behind my right eye like a sharp steel knife entering my head, and pushed right up to the hilt. Gasp! The painted ladies bring me a plastic glass of water. Searching in my pockets for the meds…the huge pain has reached its max, the steel blade withdraws; a devastation of everything, catastrophic, frantic looking for something to hold on to, or let go of, and it all tips over like a building falls on its face in slow motion, desolation, wreckage and some relief as I see it’s not happening to ‘me’ – it’s not ‘my’ pain, too big for that, much too big. It’s the force of pain on its own, like the huge wind blows, the vast rain falls, a storm at sea. Swallow two capsules, lie back, close my eyes and the curve I was seeing earlier becomes the curve of a thick dark smoke rising up from my head, swirling up through the paper-thin structure of the plane, the sky above and space all around.

Relaxed with the seat back, pain gone and all that remains is the sound of the engines at 600 mph and altitude 38,000 feet. The mind makes a ‘story’ out of it, a stretched sense of reality that includes the video I’m watching in the darkness. Memory allows all kinds of out-of-context events to be there and acceptably part of it.

Landing, bump… bump, long lumpy runway to get to the airport buildings, then the clamber and struggle for overhead baggage, push, shove. Intrude, squeeze as they do here, full body contact with total strangers, and out into a tunnel again, more tunnels becoming wider, wider then a corridor and out onto the miles of ochre coloured carpet with patterns of planets and stars. High speed moving walkways and we’re in India.

“God is a mythical word, a mumbo-jumbo word that is the invention of the priesthood. Actually, to ask whether God exists is absurd. God is existence, the very isness. When we say God exists we create something out of the word God, then God becomes a thing. But God is not a thing, nor is God a person, he is pure existence. The word is misleading because the word personifies. It is better to use the word existence. The totality of existence is God.” [Osho]

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Photo: Free internet image
Quote: Source, God is Existence itself – Osho

every picture tells a story

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IMG_2530POSTCARD #182: Bangkok: Some kind of cute little long-tailed dove-like bird has built a tiny nest in the ceiling fan we never use that’s outside on the porch; formerly the porch was where compulsive smokers would sit and flick ash into their ashtrays. Then smokers became less and less, dwindled away, became non-smokers like everyone else or joined la résistance, an underground movement. The fan hasn’t been switched on in years, the ashtrays were removed and everything was renewed, painted and no one ever went out there again.

So the birds decided it must be for them. We’re now standing behind glass doors, watching a bird arriving with small twigs held in the beak and squeezing through the bars with the structure of twigs to create a small nest base inside the metal guard. The process strikes a memory of another post in this blog from our time in Switzerland [Birds on the Balcony 1] about pigeons nesting on our balcony up there on the 7th floor. I had no camera and made a sketch of it.

pigeon-sketch-imageThe nest was in the old Christmas tree bucket we’d just put out on the balcony after Christmas had been and gone. Some of the bells and everything still dangling from the branches, the faded coloured paper of Christmas-Past… a forgotten thing. So the bird(s) just went ahead and built a nest in the abandoned tub. Strange really because the wrappings were intact, it was as if it were a continuation of a pagan rite. After a while two eggs appeared, which became two living beings with wings – and I saw the whole thing; their getting fed from the beak of the parent bird and the flapping of little downy wings. The birds on the balcony were the main focus of my attention for a long time. I feel I know such a lot about rearing birds, I’ve been through the whole thing.

Early on I realized they build their nests near human habitation because the proximity to humans is a good thing; humans chase away crows. And it was then I knew I had a part to play in this little family situation, patron and benefactor, and sure enough, security system… I had no time to prepare.

One day, I was looking out at the two cute little baby birds all huddled up in there, parent bird off to get food leaving me in charge, and suddenly I become aware of a black shape in the centre of my vision. It didn’t immediately click in my brain that it was a huge crow because maybe it’s so black, mysterious and a peculiar invisibility, a photographic negative, something that’s not supposed to be there, glinting a kind of deep purple and blue… a being materialised out of the unknown. And I’m kinda, speechless; hypnotized by it’s presence.

It slants its head with long pointed beak in the direction of the baby birds and makes a hop in their direction. I fall out of my chair, knocking over a few things in the scramble to get to the balcony door; collisions with the furniture: then a primal roar: ‘AAAAAHHHHHH!’ and wild flailing of arms, fling open the sliding glass door and the crow was gone, two little birds happy and safe, barely aware of the interruption.

My relationship with the birds became quite bonded since the visit of the crow and I felt a certain sadness when they both got their flying sense and left the balcony. Now another opportunity arises to see the beginning, and not the end….

Beauty is not caused, it is.
Chase it and it ceases,
Chase it not and it abides.
[Emily Dickinson]

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hypothesis

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IMG_2366bPOSTCARD #181: Chiang Mai/Bangkok flight: Here today and gone tomorrow or here today, next week tomorrow, time warp in an itinerary that is only continuous interchanges. Shrill announcements in Chinese, nine tones, so much air needed to get it all to sound clear, they’re almost shouting. Pain in the head, swallow medicine with a glass of water. Small tables seem to leap up and strike me with food, stabbed by cutlery and glass in the mouth, at night soft pillows try to smother me. Now sitting in an airport coffee shop with M my niece and she says, Look Toong-Ting there’s a mosquito on my chocolate brownie! And I need a moment to figure out what she just said, M looking into my disbelieving face, almond shaped eyes, black pupil almost fills the space. So I lean over to her small plate and M points cautiously with her little finger and there is a mosquito sitting there, or standing there (do they have knees?) on the edge of her brownie. I look at it closely. Do you see it Toong-ting? It’s a boy mosquito. This intrigues me… so small, the genetalia would be hypothetical – how can she tell? Where is this conversation going? Girl mosquitos drink the blood, she says. I shoo away this rude boy mosquito, and ask M if she would like me to go buy her a new chocolate brownie instead of that one that’s been walked upon by a boy mosquito? No she’ll just not eat the bit where the boy mosquito was standing. And she’s eating with a spoon so that looks possible; yes she carves away that chocolate brownie so what’s left is the tiniest cliff teetering on its own in a sea of white porcelain plate with crumbs of its relatives scattered around.

The whole world is a hypothesis – that’s the hypothesis. I’m reminded of something I think I heard somebody tell me about already, it’s only the females who go for the blood, hmmmm, typical, the males hang out in coffee shops and eat chocolate brownies. Then it’s boarding and we’re passing through apertures in walls, holes in the fuselage and sitting in 43H&J. I stow away the hand-carry bags in the locker above, a volume inside a volume, and M selects the aisle seat, sits quietly and perfectly straight, long-necked and graceful, looks around to the back with a fleeting glance that scans for detail all around the inside of the plane, right down to the front, her small eye beams flash through the interior between seats and all through the crowd unnoticed, absorb all data, processed to the brain to see if anybody looks interesting.

Meanwhile I’m sitting with my knees squashed up against the seat in front trying to find the optimum position of comfort – Thai planes are made for little people – ask M if I can put my leg in the space on her side and she agrees and seems pleased to have it there, a fallen tree trunk occupies part of her space. Asks me if I want to put the other one in as well, so I do that, one leg folded on the other and she’s fascinated by the size anomaly, but it’s too much. People will think I’m taking advantage so I take one out and fold it up against the seat in front like the mattress on a bed settee when it’s closed… it’s only a 50 minute flight

She continues looking around, stands up to look at where her seat belt is at, with head spinning nearly 360 degrees, long black hair sweeps around like curtains, then settles into her seat with the thump of her small weight and ‘click’ goes the fastener of her seat belt. These days, M is being an individual, self-contained ‘self’. She’s nearly twelve – and at that age you’ve got to know what you’re doing … I’m thinking it’s a bit sad that the crazy playfulness is gone. There’s just this beauty and sweetness and I don’t know where it comes from. M tells me to fasten my seat belt. I feel that soon it’ll be M taking care of me on these flights.

“A king heard the sound of a lute and it delighted him, so he ordered them to bring that sound. The servants brought him the lute, not the sound, and they had to explain to the king that the sound has no independent existence, but is created by the separate strings, box and arch, all elements acting simultaneously. Just as the king cannot find the sound of the lute, we can not find our self. “ [Buddha, Samyutta Nikaya]

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With thanks to to inaendelea @ the closed room for the end-quote
~   G   R   A   T   I   T   U   D   E   ~
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all in the blogosphere

the road

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19

IMG_2120POSTCARD #180: Chiang Mai: For most people in the Christian world, the Christmas festival has jingle-bells, santaclausisms and the Jesus Teachings are embedded in this but that’s okay. Somehow the essence of it got assimilated in the warmth of our Christmas-shopping and why not, it’s all-inclusive isn’t it? For a reason that seems odd and perplexing to us, somehow the two go together; spending money and generosity means exercising the purchasing muscle… and it feels like there should be more to it than that but we’re not willing to say there’s anything wrong with it because we’re all in some way compromised. A tacit approval of consumerist behavior integrated into our lives. The essential part of our spiritual Truth got shifted out of the way and consumerism came along in its place.

The Truth of the Jesus Teaching can be applied today of course in the same way as it has been for centuries. What’s missing is the gnosis (knowledge) part of the teaching. The instructions on seeing the constructed nature of appearances and the stepping-through the illusion of our world to discover the non-duality between God and ourselves:

‘His disciples said to him, “When will the kingdom come?” 
<Jesus said, > “It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be a matter of saying ‘here it is’ or ‘there it is.’ Rather, the kingdom of the father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it (113).”’ [Nag Hammadi Manuscripts].

The Jesus Teaching is immersed in a oneness of spiritual teaching all of which say something happened, in a particular geographical location. An event (or events) took place, somewhere in the region stretching from Israel and the Mediterranean through to North India, a distance of about 3000 miles. There was an ancient highway there, a road not unlike the East/West route in the early days of the expansion by American pioneers – except of course along the way, there were already communities and townships, and here and there a populated place hundreds of years old or more. This road, formed through the necessity of trading, had become part of what was called the Old Silk Road trading route stretching all the way from the Pacific side of China to the Mediterranean Sea.

We can quite accurately imagine the people living there then – some of them traveling on the Road as a livelihood because it had always been there. Facilities were set up alongside for travelers, rooms and all kinds of industries and businesses were connected with it. There’d be talk about politics, marriages, births, deaths and there was the Mystery, whatever name it was called in one place and different in another.

Others would discern the truth, discuss and explain aspects of it and an understanding of the Mystery evolved; refined learning, study and excellent teachers instructing students: it’s not about worshipping someone else doing it on your behalf, the Truth is within, you can do it by yourself. This Truth, though, was thought to be subversive by the power structures, and in that sense there’s no difference between then and now.

It is interesting that all the world’s religions arose here in this same region: the three Abrahamic religions: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and those related. Also the Brahamanic religions Hinduism, Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta and those related. We could quite reasonably propose that something took place here long ago that changed the world – maybe more than one event, enlightenment had become possible. All sorts of discoveries happened in the vicinity of this route… as long as the width of America coast to coast – the impact of it spread everywhere and all through time.

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Note: excerpts from an earlier post: Maya & Christmas
Image source: Dhamma from Phra Ajahn Jayasaro: ‘Teachers who have gained insights in the dhamma have confirmed that no matter what difficulties one has to endure, the results of the practice are worth the effort.’