snow in Thailand

Posted on December 25, 2014 by tiramit

POSTCARD #107: Chiang Mai: It’s not real, of course, but quite convincing. A large display arranged next to the MAYA shopping area [maya: illusion (Sanskrit)]. MERRY CHRISTMAS BLOGSTERS! It feels like a special day. Memorable too because it was the first time I heard my 10 year-old Thai niece M use the English word ‘artificial’. M knows what real snow is, she experienced snow in Japan. This is ‘artificial’ – pronounces all four syllables: ar/ti/fic/ial – it’s not snow it’s what it looks like. I think it’s sand, bleached white by some harmless chemical process; children sit down, play with it as if they were on a pure white beach. Most people in Thailand have never seen snow, everybody here taking photos of themselves smiling against a snowy white background. A great shower of digital flashes flicker in the blindingly bright reflected sunlight; flash-click, and a small piece of the experience of snow is captured. The group hurries to look at the picture, then they quickly regroup and take another one.

In Eskimo languages there’s not just one word for snow, there are many (‘Smilla’s Sense of Snow’ by Peter Høeg). But it may be a linguistic characteristic (Washington Post), words are added on to the main word ‘snow’ to describe its qualities. Slushy old snow would appear like this: ‘slushyoldsnow’ or if the adjectives and modifiers of the noun are arranged differently, it could be like this: ‘snowoldslushy’ so it looks like a new word if you’re not an Eskimo. It doesn’t alter the fact that there are all kinds of snow, of course – I remember from a childhood in the North of Scotland – but I can’t find words for this kind of snow; dry, warm, and light cotton beach-wear…

If M was a bit older we’d be able to talk about what is real and what is not, and how ‘artificial’ is a word, a label, a concept. There isn’t anything in the world that’s artificial… everything is something. It’s only artificial when we compare it with the agreed-upon ‘real’ – another concept. You could just as well say the whole thing is artificial, and ‘nothing is real’ (strawberry fields forever). It’s all about words, doing their thing, like what HTML coding does for everything in the internet; we’re ‘linked’ to what we think is real, everything is a living representation of what it is.

M is 10 years old, speaks English as a second language, she’s a Buddhist, goes to a Christian school and the Santaclausism of Christmas is what makes it a happy event. Same for all children. I can only hope that in a couple of decades from now she will have good English and return to this posthumous blog (if it still exists) and understand some of the things I cannot discuss with her now. Also all the other things I haven’t thought of yet; all of it, both/and, neither/nor, flickering between this and that, and I don’t know why it keeps on doing that – maybe because the Oneness is also the many; everything is everything – words cannot reach that far…

‘That which has no boundaries and is unnameable has been termed the “Void,” although this is a mere code word for something that eludes any kind of description or verbalization. Being outside space-time – that is, Infinite – means that is the Whole, invulnerable, and immortal.’ [‘The Observer is the Observed’, Robert Powell, p165]

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vertigo

Posted on December 18, 2014 by tiramit

POSTCARD #106: Bangkok-Chiang Mai flight: Waves of sunlight pass through the interior of the aircraft as it banks over in the ascent; wings tilt up towards the vertical plane at an alarmingly steep angle, and for a moment it looks like we’re going to tip right over and fly upside down… but it doesn’t do that. A rich dark landscape fills the window; reminds me of the Google Maps satellite image – click the little orange man on ‘street view’ and observe any house or street I choose. The world is a simulation, what I’m seeing is a physiological function of the brain, a projected image, back-lit like the computer screen … the place where (I thought) REALITY was, is occupied with ‘what-it-looks-like’.

A deep familiarity with the analogy – confirmed by others who smile, nod their head, yes, we believe in the resemblance of things… it’s easier that way. This is our agreed-upon certainty, the world as we know it, symbols and words, systems and processes; it’s a construct – the only possible answer the mind can come up with when asked the question: what is ‘it’ actually? Language identifies, can only provide a description of the thing – not the ‘thing’ itself. Everything depends on sensory perception, the (actual) ‘thing’ may be colourless and devoid of any recognisable quality, no odour, no taste, it doesn’t feel like anything; neither hot not cold. It has no sound. It has no weight, it has no form.

A fleeting insight into the vertigo of nothingness situated at the centre of everything. The ‘me’ I live with is not a substantial thing – so flimsy, it’s sometimes not there at all. Through the tiny window of the aircraft there’s this vast immeasurable space, extending above my head through the thin fabric of the aircraft. My Chiang Mai flight is a tiny speck appearing above a sea of clouds on the surface of the planet Earth; the characteristic ‘pale blue dot’, silver-white-sky-blue planet seen from outer space. That home-sweet-home feeling; a place shining with life in a region of seemingly dead planets… is this ‘my’ reality? Or is that an illusion too? The conditions that support life as we know it end here. Maybe we are surrounded by planets teeming with living beings who, like us, also believe they’re separate and alone in this void. And the reason there’s no evidence of it is that the software which operates our sensory mechanism is not compatible with theirs.

What I used to think was an amazing technological feat now becomes just the mechanistic nature of things; the great whine of engines and immense energy that catapaulted me up here, simply another aspect of the construct. Assembled pieces form the aircraft, wing structure is under the seating aisles so that passengers are sitting on top of a sort of swept-back flying crucifix.

Then there’s the ‘ping’ sound, as the seat-belt sign is switched off. Flight time to Chiang Mai is about 1 hour, stewardesses in pretty yellow costumes serve a small meal, it’s like going upstairs to have lunch in the sky; just enough time to have it and come down again.

“That which operates with conceptual ideas is the ordinary mind, whose characteristics include perceiver and perceived. All that is conceived in this way is false and will never touch upon the actual nature of reality. Any idea of existent, inexistent, both or neither—any such concept, however it’s conceived—is still only a concept, and whatever ideas we hold in mind, they are still within the domain of illusion.” [Ju Mipham]

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Lower image source

on the way to somewhere else

Posted on December 5, 2014 by tiramit

POSTCARD #105: Delhi airport: “The flight to Bangkok is delayed due to the late arrival of the incoming aircraft…” The announcement comes just as the Thai plane is arriving at Gate 8. I watch it from the window and take a photo… I’ll be getting on the same plane that just got here; same plane flying forwards and back most of its working life – how do I feel about this? Maintenance crews service the machinery at Bangkok and Delhi, the engines are always stationary – it’s the world that moves.

I need to charge my phone. Look for an empty seat next to an electric socket, plug in and get the cable organized. I don’t have to decide where to go or what to do now; I’ll be here for as long as it takes to charge the battery… tiny electron molecules zizzling around in a Nano world. I am not actively engaged in the process, more like the one who decides if this is going to happen or not. Passively involved in an activity the building provides the facilities for. It’s all taken out of my hands… sit quietly, everything is happening by itself.

Eyes closed, watch the in breath/outbreath, meditation in a seat in the Departures Hall. People will think I’m sleeping – if they notice me… busy with devices that convince us we are who we think we are. Attached to a sense of ‘me’ that disincludes all other evidence. The ‘me’ that I believe in depends on me thinking it… otherwise it’s not there. This is how it is at this point in time and space, where and when, and now and then.

It’s an emptiness, but no real silence here at the airport, a kind of buzz and static from miles of carpeting, fragments of conversations in a language I don’t understand – conceptualization is switched off, listening to the streams and rivers of curious sound. I become the listening; comfortably disconnected with things in this high-ceilinged place; mind/body organism focused in an environment where people are constantly and always just passing through, on the way to somewhere else. Trying to picture Thich Nhat Hanh walking quietly through a war zone – metta and mindfulness – everybody stops firing to let him pass…

“Life is so short, we should all move more slowly” [Thich Nhat Hanh (source)]

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random continuity

Posted on November 21, 2014 by tiramit

POSTCARD #103: Delhi: Traffic congestion at the market area and there’s this old black and yellow taxi in front, with red lettering on the back. I take a photo of the misspelling of ‘keep distence’ (distance) and ‘power break’ (brake). It’s this tradition they have here of keeping everyone informed with written messages on moving vehicles [check out Google’s image page: Horn Please]. Also the curious illusion of the ‘OK TATA’ slogan appearing in the back window of the taxi as if it were stuck on with tape. A closer look tells me it’s actually painted on the back of the yellow truck in front, seen through the windscreen of the inside of the taxi. The ‘OK TATA’ slogan is everywhere; OK (ti-kae ठीक in Hindi), keep your distance… that’s close enough.

The car moves slowly through the market area. Delhi streets are compelling, always something going on. My view of the world is a sequence of unrelated events except that the movement of the car seems to link them together in a random continuity of space/time. A curious connectedness that seems to make sense; it’s all of a oneness [not-twoism]. The frame of reference extended so far it’s all-inclusive; everything out there is connected to ‘me’ in here; the truth of separation and the illusion of I/ you/ he/ she/ it, in the place where we appear to be.

Car moves through the crowd and there’s a woman at a bus stop; suddenly she goes into a whole complete turn of the body, graceful extending of the neck and head… completes the movement just as I pass in the car. Can’t think what she’s doing… then afterwards I realize she must have been looking to see if the bus was coming.

The elongated, ambulating long-limbed walk of a man wearing a gathered-up white cotton garment around the legs and jacket on top. Exactly at the moment I see him, he steps down from the high pavement to street level and there’s deep bounce of limbs and musculature – stretchy ligaments taking the strain.

At the traffic lights, a very thin man slows down on his big old bicycle and his naked brown foot reaches down to come to a stop; leather shoe on dusty street… pause, rearrangement of limbs; sitting on bicycle seat, allow for distribution of weight, rest in this new posture and wait for the lights to change.

There’s a deep familiarity about this… coping with human form, weight, corporeality – I know how the man on the bicycle feels. I experience it subjectively; I am a mind/body organism, inseparable part of the whole construct. It’s something mechanized, organic with articulated joints enclosed in a warm pulsating fluidity and the sensation of the breath in nasal cavities.

Seeing the events without the story like screenshots in a sequence; a few gestures and there’s a pause, taking a moment to receive the data… mind decides whether it’s important or not. It’s as if there’s a small seed of wisdom buried deep in the layers of unknowing; lying dormant, waiting for things to evolve and the right conditions to be there in order to wake up.

“What you are basically, deep deep down and far, far in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself.” [Alan Watts] (source openobserver.wordpress.com)

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a world of lost passwords

Posted on November 16, 2014 by tiramit

POSTCARD #102: Delhi: I’ve forgotten my password… fearing my papers might be stolen, password discovered and, of course this is how the whole paranoia of Identity Theft unfolds, I dreamed up some devious way of encrypting it then forgot how I did that. Now it’s gone… this elusive quality passwords have, they slip away secretly if you’re not holding on to them or buying into the created anxiety scenario that sells the product; insurance to cover the insurance to cover the unforeseen event; an imagined disaster. Rearrange the furniture of the mind; if you’re a Buddhist, having your identity stolen is no big deal because it’s an assumed identity anyway. There never was an actual ‘self’ in here, anatta, selflessness, and spiritual generosity. I’m pretty sure there’ll come a time when banks don’t offer loans to Buddhists anymore; they don’t meet the criteria, don’t have the credentials; that tenacity of clinging to ‘me’ and ‘mine’ is noticeably absent… Buddhists are not a safe bet, at any time they may close the agreement and happily give everything away. Banks don’t like freedom from suffering; enslavement to sensory input keeps them in business.

So I feel reasonably okay about losing my password, what’s gone is gone. It’s my Thai account and they will fix it up for me – I’ll be there in 2 weeks so I’ll be able to explain the situation; go and see the same bank teller lady I’ve been visiting over the years, who will look up when I come to her desk with my queue number ticket and a recognition comes into her face: You’ve forgotten your password again, right? It did bother me at first; aging, memory loss, an inability to retain passwords, and also that she might think it’s all a made-up story… how could anyone forget their password so often? And the real reason for coming to see her again and again is that I’d like it if we could get to know each other better… we can’t go on meeting like this.

But there’s a sadness in her eyes…. it’s been so long now, years pass between our meetings, I go away, forget my password and come back and see her again, she gives me a new password and we observe each other silently. She looks well, but older. It must be this job she does; working in a bank, selling security for finance that may or may not bring wealth or ruin, manipulating a hypothetical danger… unwholesome livelihood, hovering always on the edge of anxiety. Even now I can see the lock-down procedures starting in my head – falling into the trap of believing it’s real. Let it go, let it go.

It’s a death, it’s gone, my password dwells now in the world of lost passwords where there’s no urgency about who is who or what or which object belongs to who or whom and the things we cling to, the clings we thing to, have no adherence, glue dissolves, unsticks – structures collapse, fall… form and formlessness

“… like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel, never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel. Like a snowball down a mountain, or a carnival balloon, like a carousel that’s turning, running rings around the moon. Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face, and the world is like an apple whirling silently in space – like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind.” [The Windmills of Your Mind, 1968]

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Photo: Jiab’s visit to the Southernmost tip of Kerala looking out towards Sri Lanka

transparency

Posted on November 8, 2014 by tiramit

POSTCARD#101: Bangkok Suwannabhume Airport: Looking out from the interior of this coffee shop into another interior; the glittering glass-paneled B concourse, and through that glass window to what’s out there; blue sky, a concrete horizon and planes taking off. I am contained in a transparent interior, inside a larger interior, contained in a reality construct, the steel and glass of this moment. It’s the same place I was in last time, and the time before that (the ‘Mango Tree’ coffee shop, near gates B1-B6, if you’re ever in this neck of the woods). We started coming here a year ago and Jiab comes when she’s travelling on her own… sends me phone-pics of fruity drinks and ice creams she consumes after the photo is taken. This is my departure lounge; the Delhi flight leaves from this coffee shop, rather than gate C5, which is simply the entrance to the plane. A kind of applied personification in an airport vastness, anonymity and incidental eye contact with a few individuals. I see their birth, their death, their merging in a sea of people all on the way to/from somewhere else… going or coming. We’re all just passing through.

Long columns of us waiting to be X-rayed, instructed and directed by officials guiding us into and out of security portals like water passes through rocks and stones in a continuous flowing stream. No resistance to it… the coldness of regulations; a physical sensation in a body that’s somehow become transparent. I notice how the energy feels rather than how I can ‘be’ negatively energized by it. Everything is so much not what we think it is, there can’t be any assumptions; just letting it take place and being okay about it is enough. Disengage from thinking it should be something other than what it is, and everything that’s currently bothering me about that disappears for a moment – long enough to be able to see it’s possible to let go of all the shoulds and shouldn’ts completely… the peace that’s in that.

Surveillance cameras protrude into the space I’m in and suck out all data, send it to a room containing video screens, dark and gloomy, where security people with bulged-out eyes scan the images of the crowd, zoom-in, zoom-out. I feel I’m being looked at, studied… I’ve just been jostled slightly, pockets rifled. I can’t see them but I know they’re there. This whole thing is a performance, there’s a sudden urge to do a song-and-dance act. Maybe it’s a more serious drama production; Japanese Kuroko stagehands, dressed in black, appear on stage with the actors and rearrange the scene as the play is going on. They’re there for everyone to see but become invisible. The mystery of how we can be unaware of things in plain sight – mesmerized by politicians, illusionists’ sleight-of-hand; everybody acting out the story of their lives without questioning it, improvised dialogue according to the karma of causes and conditions.

Coming near to the end… the last camera, passport stamp, thump! And I’m suddenly through the barrier, blinded by the lights of the glitzy duty-free, gold Rolexes, impossible jewelry and stumbling towards my place in the coffee shop. Waiting for the flight to be called, the great leap up into the sky. A heightened feeling, a quickening, I know all this is happening – mindful alertness, awareness creates an awareness, aware that it is aware…

“The vastness created these human circuitries in order to have an experience of itself out of itself that it couldn’t have without them.” [Suzanne Segal, Collision with the Infinite]

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‘… awareness creates an awareness, aware that it is aware’ – reference: Is Awareness Aware Of Itself?

all of the above

Posted on November 2, 2014 by tiramit

POSTCARD#100: Chiang Mai/Bangkok flight: Look out the window and there’s the wing of the aircraft I was looking at when we were on the ground and taxiing for takeoff – reassuring to see this part of our plane structure out there, seemingly holding us stable in this strange void, moving at 600 mph, in a great whoosh above the surface of the planet. The wing seems to extend into the clouds, like the perspective of a highway leading off into the sky. A curious illusion, although no more curious than the illusion that’s all around; world as a projection of the senses, everything tailored to fit and unbelievably believable… I can see it, hear it, smell it, touch it, and taste it. It looks real but it’s not there; it’s only ‘my’ perception of it, a mirror reflection of the world – I need to remind myself it’s like this, the illusion is so compelling. I am the ‘self’ that inhabits this body, appearing in the being-ness appearing in ‘me’ and part of the whole thing, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end….

The seat next to me is empty – sad to think my Thai niece, M, aged 10, who has accompanied me on so many other journeys is not able to come along this time. M’s school holidays are over… parting of the ways, she goes back to school, I go back to Delhi, stopover in Bangkok – another long journey in the air. Stewardess comes by, looks at me (who you are at any moment is determined by whom you’re talking with). I ask her about the empty seat, she says nobody will sit there now, so I can spread out my notes and papers over two seats. It’s strange not having M beside me anymore. This empty space where she used to be, this solitude, aloneness or loneliness. No chattering conversations and statements presented with the alertness of a small bird; intelligence like a receptor opens, data enters and triggers the creativity of constantly making one thing into another thing. The energy of her artwork; scissors-clipped paper-craft objects held together with Scotch Tape and ‘Fluorescent Color Glitter Glue’. And the performance; playing with words, gestures and the dreamlike ‘self’ function; playing a part in a story in her head so well she believes she’s the character being acted out – being a somebody, then being a somebody-else.

Flitting from one self to the next, her presence is a self-reflexive act. No difference between the self-construct and acting the part, it’s just there; an all-inclusive, ‘all of the above’ experience of awareness receiving itself. A total act, ‘theatre’, illusion, samsara… just immersed in the story of it all. The ‘world’ is a constructed/collapsible experience – unfolding, enfolding, no holding – automatic pilot, nobody driving the plane.

‘… the question was raised: “Why can’t we know this secret of the universe?” And the answer given was very significant: “Because we talk in vain, and because we are satisfied with the things of the senses, and because we are running after desires; therefore, we, as it were, cover the Reality with a mist.”’ [Swami Vivekanada, Maya and Illusion]

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enigma

Posted on August 26, 2014 by tiramit

POSTCARD #89: Delhi: Why is it that the back of somebody’s head is so much like a closed door? I’m standing in a line of people in the food store waiting with my purchases for my turn to pay at the check-out. It’s taking a long time and I’m wondering if I’m feeling a bit miffed about that, yes or no – anyway there’s this quiet awareness, curious and interesting. When I see the back of somebody’s head I immediately want to turn that person around with a hand on the shoulder and see who it is…. Hi there! How’re you getting on? But, can’t do that in the food store check-out line, of course, we’re all strangers and each of us isolated in this slightly tetchy discontent about having to wait… what’s happening down there? This is our predicament, looking at the backs of people’s heads in front of us, all the way down to the front. I’m moving my head from side to side, trying to see past all the other heads. But all the way down the line, other heads are doing the same thing and my line of vision is blocked by somebody else’s head moving from side to side because the head in front of them is in the way too. Funny to see all these sideways wobbling heads. I have a quick look behind me and everybody is having to do the same thing to see past me… no laughing matter, there’s a grumbling in the air.

Stand quietly, feet apart, evenly balanced and look at the back of the head of man in front. There’s a kind of frontality about the head. The face is on the front, of course, eyes look forwards, incoming data is received mostly from the front – ears are on the sides, but sideways functioning is limited. No sensory receptors on the back that have the function of sensing what’s going on in the world. Any backwards movement is blind, no rear-view mirror… trucks reversing out with that automatic beep-beep, beep-beep, beep-beep sound.

The human body is like a picture painted on a flat cardboard cutout. The whole back of my head and body is one large blind spot; a not-seeing that I know is there. Turn away, and suddenly the thing I was looking at is gone! Ignorance is a kind of ignoring – it has intelligence. I have the ability to overlook things, watch TV every day, and have ‘preferences’. I choose to be unconcerned about wars created by politicians. Prefer to be mesmerized by the reflected screen-glow of the digital device...searching for an object and never finding it. Move on, click something else, the appearance of reality holds my attention for a moment, then click on the next one. Am I really the ‘me’ I think I am? I can see that the ‘self’ is a construct, but the truth is hidden from me because there is no solid enduring self that sees it like this.

Idiosyncratic humanness caught in an unexpected circumstance. Waiting, but not that suspended state of waiting for the thing I’m waiting for; more like just waiting with the waiting. Being with the gentle in-breath/out-breath, the temperature of the air, the feel of the body standing there, and an easy observation of everything that’s happening. Balance, openness – poised between things in a place of emptiness. It’s all just moving along. There’s a gentle questioning of events as they arise… what’s this now? The moment transforms itself, observing the curiosity of it, mindfully placing one foot after the other, slowly and carefully, on stepping-stones that lead out into the river and over to the other side.

Let the water settle and you will see moon and stars mirrored in your being. [Rumi]

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Upper image, ‘Not to be Reproduced’ (La reproduction interdite), a painting by Magritte 1937. excerpts from an earlier post: a sea of people. For the insight into ‘waiting’, special thanks to Zen Doe and The Path of Waiting – G R A T I T U D E –

future in the past

Posted on August 20, 2014 by tiramit

POSTCARD #88: Delhi: In a taxi with Jiab heading out to the domestic terminal. The taxi driver said yesterday he was going to pick her up at 2.00pm – future in the past, now it’s 2.30pm and she might miss the plane. No problem, he’s intending to make up the time, he says with foot on the accelerator the whole way. We’re going so fast it’s like we’re on the edge of linear time. Everything is a blur, the “now” I experience at this moment was the future for me when I was in the past… this thought repeats over and over. Driver ignores the built-in audio system that tells us when he’s going over the speed limit; a recorded voice message can be heard in the car, which says, ‘you are going too fast!’ Innovative idea… needless to say we have to listen to this voice repeating: ‘you are going too fast!’ all the way out to the airport. Driver overtaking everything, nearside, offside, hand on the horn, and the penetrating little voice coming unexpectedly: ‘you are going too fast!’

Jiab, with her conditioning in Bangkok traffic, is maybe more used to this kind of thing than me. I’m adhered to the seat, doing my utmost to bond with the structure of the vehicle. It’s like I’m not going through these streets, these streets are going through me. There’s an alertness locked in place you could call mindfulness but it’s more like an urgency, and struggling a bit with the idea that the driver is doing all the wrong things, this shouldn’t be happening. Round a sharp corner and we swerve to avoid a small motorbike coming straight at us on our side of the road; that motorbike guy is doing all the wrong things too. Then there’s a great show of outrage at the traffic lights, because of a man on the back of a motorbike holding a vertical panel of pressboard that’s 5ft x 4ft (see photo) and the motorbike can’t go fast because of wind resistance… pedestrians running about in the traffic risking life and limb – everybody’s doing all the wrong things.

Yeh, well, it’s my perception of this that’s all wrong, of course. The people out there obviously feel they’re doing the right thing, and I’m the one who’s got it wrong. How to see it as they do when gravity seems to disappear at times? Focus on the breath, don’t look in the direction of travel, and I find a small island of calm abiding… ah yes, this is the way it is, extraordinary and exhilarating. Enjoy the show, I’m in a speedboat, everything seems fluid, things merging with other things and entering into everything else. The velocity of this vehicle rushing through the streets washes aside other vehicles as waves do in the sea; everything is like flotsam; how we normally receive experience is so near to universal unity, it’s the same thing.

Taxi arrives at the terminal, I get the bags onto trolley, Jiab jumps out, bye-bye… then I’m into the same taxi, and going back the way we came, same cacophony of noise, same breakneck speed. Get to the house and the whole journey was so quick, there and back again, it was like I’d never left. Give the driver 500 Rupees, and it’s too much I know, but I’m in a state of astonishment. Inside and crash on the sofa for an hour. A text message rouses me; it’s Jiab saying she’s in Ranchi, about 800 miles away.

“According to Vedanta, there are only two symptoms of enlightenment, just two indications that a transformation is taking place within you toward a higher consciousness. The first symptom is that you stop worrying. Things don’t bother you anymore. You become light-hearted and full of joy. The second is that you encounter more and more meaningful coincidences in your life, more and more synchronicities. And this accelerates to the point where you actually experience the miraculous.” [Deepak Chopra, ‘Synchrodestiny: Harnessing the Infinite Power of Coincidence to Create Miracles’]

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‘Future in the Past is used to express the idea that in the past you thought something would happen in the future’ For a grammatical explanation of Future in the Past, click here. ‘The “now” I experience at this moment was the future for me when I was in the past…’ developed from an idea in Silentlyheardonce. This post contains excerpts from an earlier post ‘Going Too Fast”. Special thanks to Mindfulbalance/Observing everything, for the Ajahn Amaro quote that inspired the idea: ‘I’m not going through these streets, these streets are going through me.’

the hide-and-seek game

Posted on August 7, 2014 by tiramit

POSTCARD #85: Delhi: The house seems different; everywhere there’s the sound of Thai voices like the songs of birds echoing off the walls, ceilings and tiled floor. Guests in the spare room, girlfriends of Jiab here for a visit. They are greng-jai with me (reluctant to impose themselves) knowing I’ve had to move some of my things out of the way to allow space for them. I try to convince them, mai pen rai khap, no problem. I don’t mind having to use the bathroom on the roof… there’s a bathroom on the roof? Yes, it’s a partially built second floor, just the stairwell and the bathroom up there (see photo). There are also two thatched shelters to create shade in the hot season so that it’s cooler in the rooms below.

Hot, though. I can feel it as I’m going up with my bathroom things, but there’s a fan in there. Close the door and I’m in this personal space. Only one small window I can’t see out of. Feels like I’m hidden away from the world… birds sit on the roof, wondering where I’ve gone. Trees and the sky wait for me to come back. There’s a small mirror on the wall, I see my own face looking back at me, always the eyes are held – the awareness that looks out of the mirror. Is this my “self”… is this it? I feel like I’m “it” in the hide-and-seek game: Do you want to be “it”? No, not me thanks, I was “it” last time. Then I decide to volunteer, okay, I’ll be “it”, the one who has to stay at the designated base, close my eyes and count to 100, while everybody runs away to hide.

Commence ablutions, run the shower, get under the showerhead, hoping for cool water but it’s hot. Fierce sun shines all day on the outside water pipe that connects to the water tank on top. So I’m standing there waiting for the hot water to be used up and the cool water that’ll come from deeper down the water-tank. Sure enough, the cool water starts to come through… nice. Then it gets too cold, a gust of cool air from the fan whips up the cool temperature. It becomes icy for a moment – sharp needles – jump back from the shower to let the cold water run through, then under the showerhead again. The cool water starts to be replaced by surface tank water, which is warm, nice, and then it’s scalding hot – woa! Jump back from the shower again, dry off and open the door.

The world outside opens it eyes… ah, there you are. Towel around the middle for decency’s sake and step out. It’s possible to dry off in the sunshine – stand in the doorway of the bathroom to brush my teeth, shoosha-shoosha-shoosha… stop for a moment and look again at the face in the mirror. Is this the same “it” who played these hide-and-seek games so long ago? Is this the seeker? Looking out of these eyes in a reflection of itself, and seeing a world that’s separate from the sense of “me-ness” situated inside this body. We see each other like mirrors of ourselves, even though there’s no self to speak of, nobody at home. The closer I look, the more it’s not found. The enigma of stuck-ness…

Laughter of the Thais coming up from below, I go downstairs and make my way through them all… cognitive hybrid who speaks their language like a simpleton – they say I speak it well, this is why I never learned to be fluent. Really no need to ‘be’ anything, living in both worlds…

“You will never find it, because you are it. Therefore, seeking it is the denial of its presence. In seeking it, you compel it to seem as if hidden or lost. It is You that does not alter, You, Awareness. You are that for which you long and your longing is this very presence of love coupled with a thin veil of belief that it is absent, that it is an object that can be lost and found.” [Rupert Spira, All We Ever Long For]

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