Tag Archives: awareness

a future un-lived in

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New Delhi: Sunday morning, early, everyone deeply asleep. A dog barks, forming a single sound isolated in the quietness like the frog haiku: “The old pond, A frog jumps in: Plop!” The echo reflected off the walls, window glass, ting! For a moment I feel like I’m not here, invisible. This is how it’ll be after we move away from here and the house is to be demolished as soon as we leave, the house agent says. A new apartment building will take its place. How does this feel? Hovering at the edge of vision, large men with jack-hammers, iron picks and shovels, restless, waiting for us to go.

There are huge profits to be made renting out apartments in this area. Our old house is wasted real estate. For us, the tenants, of course we suffer the loss. The entire space we inhabit right now will disappear completely, only the Frangipani tree remaining; leaves covered in masonry dust until the monsoon winds blow, then the rains come and wash the leaves clean again. I try to picture it; we move out and the same day demolition begins; roof is off before lunchtime, walls come down in the afternoon, trucks drive away with all the rubble and there’s nothing but empty space… birds fly through.

Long after this, maybe we forget our old house has been deleted from memory files, and try to remember what it was like being here… unsupported imaginings, totally gone, no evidence here of the building we used to call home – nothing to back it up. Is death like this? This is the end; a future un-lived in, present time has no materiality. I see myself here in an almost invisible house, standing on the second floor with vestiges of walls, floor crumbling away, and I’m just floating up there.

The vanishing of it also somehow associated with darkness, I can’t see anything; for example, entering a darkened room, and have to search for the light switch on the wall, at the door frame b by practiced palm and fingertip reaching over the cool wall until it gets to the switch click. In the other rooms it’s more difficult to find the switch and I’m often stuck there groping in the darkness but no light switch to be found. I close my eyes as if that might help, trying again and again. How can this be? Am I comfortable with the thought I don’t know, and knowing I don’t know? Yes, it was there, but it’s not there now.

No resting place, all is movement, a composition of joined-up pieces which fit together like a jigsaw puzzle makes a picture, then broken up into pieces and back in the box, lid closed. Next time it’s opened and put together, a different picture appears and different players. Transition of moving parts everything has changed again. Not ‘here’ for long enough to say much, just passing through. Sorry, can’t stay, got to go now. But wait, not yet… we’re here until the end of September. This short time we’re in right now is only one moment in countless tiny instances, citta moments, and in larger chunks of time, a sequence of images form movement like the ‘stills’ creating continuity in the old 35 mm celluloid film shown in the cinema, the Moving Picture Show.  First posted August 27, 2017

Anicca (Impermanence), a core Buddhist doctrine stating all conditioned things (physical/mental) are transient, constantly changing, and subject to decay, arising and passing away moment by moment, a fundamental truth revealing the unstable, unsatisfactory nature of existence and the absence of a permanent self, leading to liberation (Nirvana) when truly understood.

an evening flight

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Bangkok/New Delhi flight: My frequent flyer card gets me an upgrade thus I carry my head pain with mindfulness and step behind the curtain folds where the grass is always greener. Glasses of champagne on silvered trays among the apple juices and orange juices – I don’t indulge, impossible, these days of heavy-duty neural pain killers. Look out at the sky, strange flesh-coloured clouds above a dark horizon I don’t recognize. It could be a different planet. Sounds so shrill and pointy-ended I have to wear earplugs squashed into the contours of the auditory passage and pressed in by fingertips. Members of the public seem alien, sentient beings but complex individuals; somehow, I can’t identify with them; I just never noticed how weird things were before…

There was the transformation, something else existed before I found I was in a low gravity world, a pharmaceutical weightlessness that allows me from time to time to contemplate the intrusive pain growing inside me like a tree, branches and twiglets with buds opening; it’s there but I can’t feel it – there was a time when I didn’t have this condition (PHN)… hard to believe. Sensory impingement, even through dark glasses, light hurts as the last of the sun’s rays enter cabin windows, sweep around the interior in the steep ascent of the aircraft and the course setting for Northwest.

A child is crying, front-left. I’m in an aisle seat, the sound piercing through insulation of the meds like a medical probe penetrating internal organs, deeper and deeper. I try tilting my head in small increments to alter the directional frequency of received sound but it’s not working – inconsolable. Fighting against it creates a narrative, “resistance is futile, you will be assimilated,” trying to open to the experience, extending, retracting… then the hum of the aircraft engine sends the child to sleep.

Dinner served and earplugs removed, I’m watching my video (Tomorrowland), good quality earphones and about three of a total four hours flying time remaining – then it happens. In the glimmer of video screens and forever trays of drinks offered by slim shadows of airline staff, a fairly large group of people block the passageway on my left. They’re flying together, look like the same family, all are tall have large physiques, bearded men, women wide at the bottom end, and they’re ordering items from duty-free with handfuls of US currency sprouting like leaves on a tree with many limbs. They can’t count out the amounts correctly because it’s too dark. I feel my irritation flare up in all the disorder and stewardesses’ strobe-like torch flashings. Then a mistake in the change, or something goes wrong, so all the items that were purchased and placed in overhead lockers have to be taken out and checked again.

I’m holding an unbelievable pain/stress crisis from exploding. The squeezing-past-each-other in crowded aisle means I get pushed by large rear-ends of women who feel they’re small and invisible. Then the little girl starts to cry again and I see the cute child, mouth a round black hole, arms and legs extended, a miniature version of the FAT PEOPLE who are her immediate family. The wail of distress breaks the sound barrier; child is carried up and down the aisle by different uncles, aunties, then a very harassed mommy, upper body kinda jogging up and down the aisle gets the child to sleep. Every time mommy turns around, I receive a buttock shove in the head. The silent pressure that’s inside my head, asylum-straight-jacketed, cannot be contained anymore… it goes, restraints bursts wide open – nothing said nobody harmed, just the measured giving way to it. The relief is huge… large out-breath. How did I do that? Time stretches out of shape, vertigo, where are we now? Good question, flying at 600 mph. Pressure returns, in defence, I attempt to recreate the climax of what just happened and do it again but… the mind forgets, it goes on and things settle down towards the end. We arrive in Delhi, nice landing and a few minutes early. First posted October 24, 2015

‘Surrender is the most difficult thing in the world while you are doing it and the easiest when it is done.’ [Bhai Sahib]

the forever window

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Chiang Mai: Early evening, M asks what kind of walls I’d like to have in the house she’s building for me. It’s the Minecraft game, everything created from virtual terrain, mountains, sea, sky and a square sun. She looks up from the iPad window and turns to me with enquiring lift of the eyebrow (a nine-year-old veteran). I say well, how about stone – walls are made of stone, aren’t they? It’s an unimaginative answer lacking in conviction – not paying attention properly. I ask what the choices are. She taps the screen to show me: gold, lapis, and you could have diamonds. Generosity. But I’ll just have the stone, please – keep it simple (thinking to myself is she going to come out soon from this digital dream she’s fallen into? Come out, it’s late and you have to do your homework. Be mindful and attend to things in the real world?) But there’s no ‘real’ world here. M says, what kind of roof you want in your house, Toong-Ting? (It’s her name for me) and I’m drawn into the discussion again. You like floor tiles Toong-Ting? I say what I’d like, and that looks nice (trying to reach her by telepathy, please, please emerge from the iPad window soon and think about the homework always in arrears!) For a moment it seems like she’s going to close the iPad but no, it goes on: why do you want that one? This other one looks nicer, does it look nice to you Toong-Ting?

I find answers that fit each question, but there’s no end to it; I know now the point of the exercise is to indulge expansively in this great wealth of choices. We have to try them all. No such thing as a final choice. The iPad is a forever window, a deep lake of astoundingly rich colours that’s difficult to surface from after you’ve fallen in – everything else in ‘real’ life is sadly dull. M dives into the forever window simply because it’s there. The containment of it is the context. The question answers itself, no need even to ask, cause becomes effect, timelessness without end.

Then for a moment she emerges from the dream, a flicker of alertness in her eye. Quickly, grab the opportunity! Act out a continuation of playfulness and joy, extend the interest to our surroundings and she decides to follow. Good, yes! It’s like guiding someone dismayed by sensory overload. Now let’s close the forever window for a while, shall we? Life is the same as it was but it’s quite nice out here. Fetch the school bag, heavy with stuff, reach inside and pull out a scrumfled homework book from the tangle of scraps of food wrappers in there, bits of tissue, and an overall blueness from a pen that flooded its ink inside the bag, a long time ago. My fingers are always slightly blue after visiting M’s bag; I go wash my hands while she considers her homework.

They have to make a simplified pop-up book page; the double page you open and a whole scene pops up. Wow, we never had fun homework like this when I was a kid! The teacher has given her a model of the folded-out paper mechanism she has to copy. A small spark of interest. Can do by myself now, Toong-Ting, she says, goes over to the sofa and pulls a large cushion over her head: but I have to think it first… stays under the cushion for quite a long time and I’m beginning to think I should ask if she’s okay under there. But next time I look M has cut and formed the folded-out bit with a scissors, glued on the picture that’s supposed to ‘pop up’ and it works – yaay! Well, not brilliant, but homework is not supposed to be a fun thing, it just gets ‘finished’. It’s done, put it away, now where were we? A voice says: may I borrow your iPhone, Toong-Ting? First posted March 25, 2014

‘We have a duty to befriend those aspects of obedience that stand outside of our house and shout to our reason, “O please, O please, come out and play.” For we have not come here to take prisoners or to confine our wondrous spirits. But to explore ever and ever more deeply our divine courage, freedom, and light.’ [Hafiz: We Have Not Come to Take Prisoners]

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alert 2

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First posted September 8, 2012: GVA Switzerland: First dawn light and a black crow, last phantom of the night, flies in from the lakeside with louder and louder calls until it passes below our 7th floor balcony and the sound gets fainter as it disappears behind the building, then into the distance … CRAW … CRAW. I’m sitting here, alert, and listening to that sound until nothing can be heard at all. No object to activate ear consciousness. It’s the Sunday morning GVA sleep-late feeling; only the zzz zzz zzz ZZZs coming from all the apartment buildings around. Look out the window, nobody about, streets are empty. I listen for the slightest sound but there isn’t anything… only the act of listening. It’s a novelty for me because I’m used to the hub-bub of Asian cities. Awareness poised, waiting for some object to come into range of the receptors. Without an object, awareness goes on forever. I can hear some sounds that are very far away, therefore I have an idea of ‘faraway-ness’. Beyond the range of receptors there is the great empty dome of sky, the void, suññatā1, spreading out around all things and present in all things

Attention drifts away and a series of incidental thought episodes appear; an anthology of short stories, then it’s all gone again in a moment. The empty space returns, the interval; why this pause? What is this still point where there’s no thought?

‘… (the) still point is not in the mind, it’s not in the body; this is where it’s incapable of being expressed in words, ineffable. The still point isn’t a point within the brain. Yet you’re realising that universal silence, stillness, oneness where all the rest is a reflection and seen in perspective…. personality, kamma, the differences, the varieties … are no longer deluding us because we’re no longer grasping at them.’ [‘The Way It Is’, Ajahn Sumedho, page 123]

The period of pause lasts as long as it takes for the next thought to arise and the tendency to create an identity for it, but before that happens there is this state of nothing. A non-event is taking place; everything gradually stops shifting around, settles down; time begins to stretch out and it all moves incredibly slowly. I forget and attention wanders again.

A pigeon flutters in, comes to rest on the balcony rail, folds away its wings, and there’s this small sigh. Quite a deep bird-sized sigh, filling its lungs with air, releasing it and a little ‘bob’ of the fat round body: ah, that’s nice….it looks at me with extended neck curiously then gets involved in preening feathers in strangely revealing postures.

I hear Jiab in the back room, doing things. She arrived from Phnom Penh yesterday. Not jet-lagged, she says, but we do have to do the laundry at this unusually early time in the morning. The laundry room is in the mezzanine of the building, so off we go, very quietly, one step at a time, downstairs, 6:00AM, past all the sleeping doorways of other people’s apartments, carrying the laundry in bags and trying to be really silent because the whole thing is a bit like being in a graveyard.

Then Jiab wants to sneeze… Oh no! It’s held for a moment then escapes. A surprisingly loud short sound like the bark of a small dog. The noise of it echoes around the tiled corridor and staircase, the window glass panels vibrate for a moment; metal rails hum in resonance and there’s the echo of it all through the stairwell. Dynamic. The silence is shocked by it! We spend some time after that trying to control the intense laughter as we go quietly down with our heavy bags.

1suññatā: (Śūnyatā) the absence of inherent existence in all phenomena.

‘Alert to the needs of the journey,
 those on the path of awareness, like swans, glide on, leaving behind their former resting places.’ [Dhammapada verse 91]

the seen

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February 21, 2015 New Delhi: Birds fly low between the buildings, suddenly see me sitting at a desk in the sunshine on the roof terrace and swoop straight up into the sky… not expecting me to be there – usually there’s nobody around on these rooftops, the human domain should be down below. I’m in their flight path and feeling a bit uneasy about that, move my chair out of the way… avoiding collision with bird flying at 30 mph.

But they seem to have communicated with each other about it somehow – is it possible? No birds pass through after that. I’m looking out from the roof terrace level with the treetops, birds flit, zoom, dart, leave no tracks in the sky. Perch on a branch for a moment, flick their head in my direction – aware of my presence, and away without warning in unexpected directions; ‘up’ is not necessarily up and neither is down – ground level is not the reference point.

And these ominous birds of prey circling high above… I’m thinking I want to take a photo if one comes near. Take out phone camera and stand in the middle of the roof, point it at the birds. They’re too far away… no, wait, there’s one coming towards me. Take a few photos as it comes closer. It seems curious, coming over for a look – nearer and nearer; our eyes meet in a strange encounter, it knows it’s being looked at and I’m on the edge of being hypnotised by it watching me here in the centre of this pool of intense vision, like a spotlight moving over the landscape.

Are these smaller birds aware of the predator – is this why they move so quickly? All this and more; an extraordinary alertness, joyful, immediate. They’re in a different kind of temporality. Their world is forever the same moment here-and-now taking place in all other locations and everywhere at the same time. I’m in slow motion, don’t see it, burdened with human mechanisms of sensory perception and lost in thought. I have to consciously look for the way to get back to ‘here’… telescopic sights of mindfulness on crosshairs of past/future that focus on the ‘now’, the point of reference – discovering I don’t have to try to create it because the present moment is already here, always present… it’s the mind that goes away.

Traces of these last thoughts vanish. If I don’t reach out for the next thing to think about, there’s just the stillness of the event itself; a transparent curtain through which there’s a transparent stage in a transparent theatre and all the actors with the illuminated background shining through from behind.
“…sound does not exist, separate from our hearing; sights do not exist, separate from our seeing; tastes do not exist, separate from our tasting; smells do not exist separate from our smelling [….] our projection of an “external world” — of objects “out there” which we then interact with via the sense-organs of a seemingly individual bodymind — is a claim that can never be experientially verified.” [Elizabeth Reninger, “If A Tree Falls In A Forest …” – Bishop Berkeley Meets Laozi]

goodbye the wind

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September 2, 2017: Delhi: This is the last whole month in the house, everything now coming to an end at the end of September. Goodbye this room, floor, ceiling, these walls, aperture of window looking out on to small garden, and beyond to the park where these exceptionally tall trees have given us so much shade from direct sunlight. Goodbye trees, goodbye everything deeply green, tree roots and wide leaves in this warm humidity, growing even as we speak.

And always a rustling of the wind, I follow the movement of large branches lowering, rising, and see how the whole mass of foliage shifts in accord with the continuity of movement… the air displacement itself a manifestation of the wind. Where’d it go… have you seen the wind? A wind narrative that never comes to an end, a wind becoming animate intelligence, an unseen form, disconnected from everything. A wind that’s present in all places at the same time, a wind that enters into and out of all things as if it were something autonomous, an invisible entity rising and falling away, form and formlessness in a causality of change and movement.

There’ve been times when it was at its peak and I’d watch from the shelter of this window… sudden velocity of wind strikes the pane of glass against its frame, Bang! I fall back in a moment of shock and fear, as if it were a living thing! The whole garden in a massive transition of wind becoming foliage; metaphor becomes reality, magician, voodooist, witch, wizard of a wind in a nightmare of dancing trees, wild and waving, with a sudden pliability hard to believe.

Everything out there and in here gives form to the insane energy of a wind that enters everywhere and into every single thing. Blows out gusts, sucks in voids, spins it in a vortex and swooping down as if inquisitive about something, filling up all the spaces below there, then suddenly out and up, high in the sky where only birds engage with it.

The sudden sound of it when a huge broken-off bough appears, as if it were something alive, tumbles through the foliage in a rush of leaves whispering in thousands of voices that seems to crash like waves upon a beach, and rises up again in a great sigh of leaf-whispering. Waves upon waves of masses of clustered notes break upon the shore, becoming less and less in an ordered succession of movements.

Goodbye the wind that quietly gusts its way through the mind, my awareness of it rises as it rises, I’m more alert when it’s loud, and when it’s quiet again I feel more at ease. But only for a moment, another small wave of it becomes a parallel thought flow to a story in the mind; it never rests… swooping shadows plunging deep into patterns of foliage over and over.

“Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.”
[Alan W. Watts]

karma of circumstances

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Delhi: Arriving at the breakfast table like a ship docking in the harbor. Sliding in to coffee and bagels. Spread peanut butter on toasted bagel, then slices of banana. A piece of it held between finger and thumb comes into vision for a moment and it disappears somewhere below my nose, as head tilts forward in a teeth/tongue snatch, chewing, chewing and swallow. The world enters my body – gratitude (“give us this day our daily bread…”). Transfiguration of flesh, blood and bones, hair and fingernails grow.

Hands and face wash – hot soapy water dribbling down bare arms, drops off at the elbows in two puddles on the floor… sudden déjà vu, memory of an unreasonable fear. Must have been a childhood scolding. Bend down and dry it all up, headache like a cue ball colliding with the inner walls of the skull. Always like this, in every new instance, reassembling the parts of who I am, and nothing seems to fit; searching for a ‘self’ to be satisfied with – or dissatisfied with, or upset, or angry, confused, depressed, gloomy or sad.

I’m drawn back across the years to how it must have been at birth. Sudden embodiment in a separate physicality, immense sound, trauma of coldness that has no name, the shock of air entering unopened lungs. All the early events from there on that are internalized; unexpected fear, huge sensations – everything happening without language to give it form so it cannot be understood. All the hurt and pain deeply embedded in who I am today.

My life is conditioned by these energy imprints, which are as present now as they were “then” – the past doesn’t exist, ‘clock time’ doesn’t cover it. There is only the karma of circumstances contained in present moment awareness.

I’m so glad to know this, if I didn’t have the PHN headache condition, I wouldn’t feel as motivated to look everywhere for a cure, and thus begin to uncover the mystery. A handful of meds swallowed with a swig of bottled water and in a short while, everything begins to fall into an easing… long sigh of outbreath. I cannot find language that fits the moment.

The melancholia of winter. It takes a while to notice the sun shining through the kitchen extractor fan. Around this time, the shadow cast by the next-door building moves away. I can go up now to the roof terrace and sit in the sunshine… footsteps on concrete steps, flip-flop, flip-flop, flip… disappear up the staircase. [First published January 24, 2017]

“Advaita (nonduality) does not mean “one” in the sense of eliminating all differences. The differences are present in the one in a mysterious way. They are not separated anymore, and yet they are there.” Bede Griffiths (1997)]

passing through

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First published March 9, 2014: Chiang Mai: Situated at the top of a column of words (at the time of writing), light and easy, a feeling of no-thingness, the world is here but no serious attachment to anything. Emptiness of space in the place where “I” have not yet arrived and the sensory mechanisms that give the world meaning for me are still offline. Look at the altitude app, it says 1043 ft. above sea level, add 180 feet for the height of a 7 floor building and my location is identified. I am standing with my bag here on the top floor of said building, waiting for the elevator down… everything goes down from here. Doors open, step in with my bag on its little wheels, doors close, and down we go. It’s a small elevator space with large mirror. Is this good or bad; the witchcraft of mirrors. Study my reflection, hmmm… look into my eyes and see my eyes looking back out at me – slightly scary, stop doing that. Elevator stops at the 3rd floor, doors open, nobody there… a volume of 3rd floor air enters, doors close. We go down again, floor numbers on the indicator decrease as we descend further. Look at my reflection like a friend standing next to me. Examine the teeth in a large wide grin; watch myself holding this grimace, weird guy. Try to be normal; this is how I’m seen in public. Elevator reaches the ground level.

The people in the lobby are engaged in a conversational event that started before I got here and there’s a pause in the dialogue as I step into their space. Eyes look… do we know you? Smile, show teeth, no cause for alarm folks, just passing through. Walk out the main door and lift my bag down the steps. Street restaurants, the smell of exotic cooking, noise and clatter, a child cries, bicycles creak, rubber wheels on hot tarmac, a motorbike fills the place with sound. I have the feeling that I’m now situated at the top of a column of bones, ligaments, tissue, fluidity, and looking out of two holes in the skull that bond together into a single screen monitor – just the edges seen and the side of the nose. If I focus on something in the environment, through sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, there’s a curious ‘entering’ takes place… the outside world invades totally, no boundaries, and my whole head disappears* (funny how it does that) and there’s only the world, with me in it, headless. Everything switches back to normal view, when I want it to, and back to watching my feet appear and disappear on the ground below, one at a time: left, right, left, right. My bag following behind, rumbling along on its little wheels, slippers flip-flop on soles of feet…

Looking for a passing tuk-tuk or some means of public transportation that’ll take me to the airport. Reality check: am I at peace with myself? Is there an easefulness or am I busy thinking about things? How am I feeling? Allow the software to do its job; the facility of reflecting on how all this is going so far. Outer noise and heat find a way through the senses and have an effect on the mind/body organism in its ambling walk down the road – that stumbling gait, typical of lanky Western folk. Pleased to know how it feels and I can be aware of the sensation without making it into something I love or hate. Letting the events of the mind go unheld; give it all away, the great generosity of relinquishment. Be kind to myself, the ongoing practice of learning how to live my life. Tuk-tuk arrives, get in, wind in my face…

.‘Human beings have a reflective quality that steps back from experience and says: “I don’t like this. It shouldn’t be this way. Stop it!” The aim of the spiritual path is to fully understand that the main problem of life is not that the government is unfair, that one isn’t getting enough money, that there is hunger, violence, pain or sickness, not even that one isn’t loved – but the feeling in the reflective mind of being bound down by these circumstances. Once we have clearly understood the mind, we can experience patience, equanimity, and release – even in predicaments that can be difficult or unpleasant.’ [Ajahn Sucitto, ‘Making Peace With Despair’, from the volume: ‘Peace and Kindness’]

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*Reference to: ‘On Having No Head’ by Douglas Harding

–  G  R  A  T  I  T  U  D  E  –

a somewhere-else place

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First published October 23, 2020: Bangkok: Awake in the darkness before 6 am, sit up in bed and take a meditational posture I invented myself. I can get the body up into the folded legs position, seated on two pillows on top of each other which sink into the mattress. This way I can hold my position comfortably just above the level of the bed, kinda floating there with the knees supported by rolled up edges of quilts pushed into the gaps. It takes a moment or two to get it feeling right… then there is only the breath.

Breath entering the body… feel the impact of incoming air in the nasal passage, “Breathe in slow-ly, breathe out lo-ng”. The breath hurries away, then comes back again as if it has forgotten something – searching all through the body, then it withdraws. Breath enters the body again, this time like a gust of wind, blows everything all over the place. Withdraws in a moment and it’s gone.

Vivid sweeps of colour and a curious light illuminating the space perceived behind the eyes. Mind is aware of the headache that’s always here, otherwise mesmerized by the form and function of the body, only slightly held in this limited temporality; thin skin of eyelid lizard-like slides over surface of smooth eyeball and that strangely seen light entering my darkness; just this…

Birdsong in the trees outside tell me it’s near daybreak, sensory processes perceive the world, aware that it’s an upside-down reflected hologram the brain and optic nerve make sense of – understood but impossible to see it as it is. Or is this how it is… in its as-it-is-ness? Was this world here before I was born? Something wrong with the question, duality. Everything just going on as it is now, without that person called ‘me’ in it. There’s an anonymity about this that’s quite liberating; birds in the trees and all the other random events taking place as they are now, here in this thin slice of time, revisiting the discussion; all that was said, received, held, seen, nurtured.

Then, a window opens. There’s a visitor arriving from somewhere, thousands of miles from here and in a great expanse in time. He appears in the form of a small boy, bowed head, string showing round the neck at the collar; latch-door key kid, scruffy uniform, bleeding at the knee. Teacher in a controlling voice says, ‘You have to think about what you’re doing before you do it, okay?’ Small boy nods, says ‘yes Miss, and shuffles out of the room to go and see the nurse about the knee. Teacher was talking about mindfulness decades before it came to be what it is today. For me, as an adult it remained something unlearned, but bearing a familiarity and intuitively known when it became conscious.

Daylight is here and I’m now lying on the bed, thinking about the small boy as he was in a state of anxious urgency every day and for many years to come. No one at home for support, forgetful and undecided because of the struggle to ‘get it right’ and nobody to reassure him that yes, you can leave book-work and use intelligent guesswork. The built-in reasoning of mind in these circumstances is enough.  

I’m telling myself this of course too late for it to be to be acted upon. I had to take the long way round; wasted years disappeared, searching for motivation in situations that offer comfort, shelter, gratification, everything thrown to the wind. Stumbling and crashing through the successes and failures of many lives, and coming to India more than thirty years ago – there to be suddenly awakened to the whole story”. It took me a very long time to grow up, and even now at the age of 73 years, I feel like an adolescent. Maybe I stayed young and it’s the world that got old…? I continue to return to these windows that open in memory. There must be a larger awareness that includes this, here-and-now… an awareness of one thought that includes awareness of another. There’s something that allows me to consider this, I’m seeing it from a somewhere-else place.

Photo by Sue Douglas

jesus & advaita vedanta

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First published July 1, 2012. [Note: The original post attracted a lot of attention, 74 likes and many comments, some of which continued 5 years later. I learned so much from them … it’s worth taking a look, I’ve included some of these at the end of the post.]

I didn’t know about Advaita Vedānta when I was a child and only recently discovered there were people like Alan Watts (and others) writing about non-duality in the Christian context, [link to part of the Alan Watts’ essay: This Is It]. Now I’m convinced it is important to focus on the fact that there is something at the heart of Christianity. The uncomfortable feeling that’s followed me all these years – that somehow, I missed the point of the Jesus Teaching – all this has gone when I think of the Advaitist aspect of the teaching. It’s the missing piece of the puzzle I just stumbled upon, coming from an Asian perspective, an inductive knowing and that’s how it works.

The reason I didn’t see it before is because the Western concept of God, having human attributes (similar to the Advaitist idea of Ishvara), contradicts the rational scientific view. Accepting something that’s scientifically impossible, just because it’s written down in the Bible, doesn’t make sense. It’s like a myth and that’s why Christianity never had any reality in the West. What’s needed is to take it all a bit further.

‘… when human beings think of Brahman, the Supreme Cosmic Spirit is projected upon the limited, finite human mind and appears as Ishvara. Therefore, the mind projects human attributes, such as personality, motherhood, and fatherhood on the Supreme Being. God (as in Brahman) is not thought to have such attributes in the true sense.’

In Western countries, people are wandering around without a map. There’s the shopping mall and that’s all. How to let go of the individual ‘self’ if everything in the system is aimed at getting you to hold on? Looking for the way out by browsing possibilities will take a lifetime. The distractions built-in to window shopping behaviour are designed to keep you ‘shopping’ and prevent you from finding the way out too easily. By the time you get there you’ll have forgotten what it was you were looking for.

‘The Advaita Teachings are pointers, offered at the level of the audience, so to some people Jesus would talk about “a mansion with many rooms” and to other people he would say: “(heaven) is within.” (And) without understanding Advaita and the way pointers are adjusted depending on the audience, (most) Christians haven’t a clue what Jesus was talking about.’

Those who didn’t fall into the shopping mall trap just took the belief ‘thing’ to pieces to see what it was made of. That’s how it was seen that there was/is no substantial “self” in the centre of consciousness. It’s an operating system that keeps all working parts in the state of ‘oneness’. We are, right at this moment, God itself, and we can rejoice in that – if we can break out of our individual identity….’ If someone had been able to explain it to me like this when I was a child, the challenge to find out what it could mean would have been enough motivation for a lifetime.

‘When you fully understand that which you are and cannot not be, there is nothing to do to be

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Jesus and Advaita Vedanta