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

kop

Posted on December 13, 2014 by tiramit

OLD NOTEBOOKS: Chiang Mai: I get woken up in the middle of the night… there’s a sound outside: ‘kop’. What is it? There it goes again: ‘kop!’ It’s a man’s voice, ‘kop?’ It takes me a moment to figure out he’s calling someone whose name is Kop. In the Thai language ‘kop’ means ‘frog’, it’s the sound made by these cute little green frogs they have: ‘kop-kop-kop…’ This is felt to be child-like and sweet, and it’s used as a girl’s name. So he is calling her name, standing outside her door, and she is inside the house, not responding to her name being called. Maybe she’s asleep, it’s very late. Or maybe she’s just not letting him in; she threw him out? It’s a story I just arrived in… missed the beginning.

The man doesn’t lose his patience or get angry; he’s not reacting in any kind of emotional way, or saying anything else other than her name – repeated over and over: ‘kop?’ It’s a voiceless, insistent, urgent, loud whisper: ‘kop?’ There’s something very Thai about this, the anxiety about “losing face” he’s compromised with having to call Kop just loud enough so she’ll hear him but not too loud or the neighbours will hear him. What time is it? 3.30 AM. Oh wow! Come on Kop, wake up, or whatever, let the guy in.

There’s a long silence, she must have opened the door, and now he’s inside. I drift off to sleep but the sound comes again: ‘kop?’ and I’m jerked back into wakefulness. She didn’t let him in. It’s frustrating, frantic loud whispering is not enough, he needs to shout. If this was happening in the West, he’d be making a huge noise probably. But he doesn’t do that – non-confrontational behaviour… there’s an interesting balance in this situation. There’s stress of course but also mindfulness. I’m awake enough to see how it works; the sound comes at random, it’s almost painful. I feel I’m beginning to lose it; stress – okay, I’ll not be averse to it, welcome Stress! Come on in, sit down, make yourself at home.

Then it changes. The next sound I hear is: bhrrrr and then: bhrrrrrrrrrrrrr it’s the sound of a doorbell with a flat battery, or it’s nearly flat – not a sharp piercing ring like: rrrrrrrrrrring! More of a dull rattle: bhrrrrr…. There’s barely enough battery power, I can hear it getting slower and slower. After a while there are just odd buzzing noises and the battery runs out. He persists for a couple of minutes, pressing the button on a dead battery and the click sound of the bell-push striking metallic plate; enough to remind Kop he is still outside.

Desperate but able to remain balanced, not engaging with the emotional side of it, upekkha (equanimity) – not being ruled by passions, desires, likes and dislikes. It’s a bit like that for me too, struggling with the disturbance. There is compassion for his predicament and after a short while the ‘kop’ sound has the quality of birdsong. The Buddha described it as: ‘abundant, exalted, immeasurable, without hostility and without ill-will.’

He continues with his enhanced stage-whisper… ‘kop?’, persists with the faulty doorbell until eventually Kop opens the door. I hear it close again, there’s an indistinct mumbling after that. Then there’s no more sound for the rest of the night.

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reblogged earlier post. My computer is in the repair shop again and this post created on the iPad, limitations…

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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agreement

Posted on October 25, 2014 by tiramit

POSTCARD#99: Chiang Mai: The day before yesterday I got my computer back from the repair shop… the stress of these last three months with it crashing all the time has been too much. No reliable way of getting it fixed because I’m travelling all the time and things being as they are in these Asian locations, making do, and looking out for an opportunity all the time. Meanwhile having to use the WordPress app for iPhone – really too small and going cross-eyed. So I bought an iPad mini which my 10-year-old niece (M) grabbed immediately and I had to go back to using the iPhone again – this is how it is…. Then when the laptop came back there was this small revelation – maybe it was just the relief that the stress wasn’t there anymore. Hard to say how or when it changed, some time after what we call the ‘now’ moment – perception arises after the event, it occurs in hindsight… things are seen to be in agreement. Everything attached to the former is suddenly gone… there’s something in the air.

Even before it happened, there were signs that it all seemed to be moving towards this kind of integration. Walking down the lane to the main road, mid-morning traffic, I see a tuk-tuk (3-wheeled taxi) arriving, just as I emerge on to the thoroughfare, and it stops right in front of me. I climb in and off we go; no traffic hold-up anywhere, no red light at the junction, just one large right turn and down the straight road to the mall building. Get out, pay the driver, into the mall, up to the second floor and I’m thinking the repair shop’ll not be open yet… probably have to get a cup of coffee or something. But all the lights are on, staff behind the desk, no line of people waiting… how can it be as easy as this? So I go in and hand the guy my creased and crumpled stapled-together papers with repair-job number and signed receipt for $680(!) They had to send for the parts from Singapore (incredible) and it’s taken a month already; there’s a kind of grumbling discontent hovering like a shadow at the edge of vision; grumble-grumble-grumble, and I’m waiting for the trigger: he’s going to tell me it’s not ready yet… I’m going to fall back into the justified-outrage film-loop thing that plays in the head… but it wasn’t like that, the man comes out from behind somewhere and he’s holding my laptop, says it came back yesterday. Here you are, he says, and gives it to me.

Unbelievable, put it in the bag: thank you very much, bye-bye, and downstairs to street level. Another tuk-tuk just happens to come along, get in and away on the long straight road; no red light for the second time, wide swerve left and along the narrow lane to the apartment. Up in the elevator, get inside and searching for the power cable for the laptop – can’t find it, maybe it’s lost… oh no, grumbling discontent returns… ‘self’ as the victim-of-circumstance default. Then while I’m looking for that, I find another power cable, the one for my little projector, wow! I’ve been looking for that for months… and sure enough, I find the power cable for the laptop; it was where I left it. The missing pieces of the jigsaw fit exactly, and it’s a huge relief to have my machine back.

The rest of that day just vanished, busy getting things re-installed, and I wasn’t able to put up the post I’d intended, so now I’m two days late. The world is reflected upon in hindsight. I was going to write something about 23 October being Chulalongkorn day in Thailand and, by chance, it was also Divali in India (lunar calendar)… there goes that agreement thing again, celebrations all around. Another factor in it all is that this is my 99th postcard post, something satisfying about that number. Then there’s this awareness that everything is in agreement, a renewed certainty in the way things are. The return of the laptop puts everything right, it means also that M now has unlimited access to the iPad, and she’ll most likely fall heir to it around Christmas. So I’m glad I’m glad I’m glad, and I’ll be able to read all your posts again, thank you…

“The search for a spiritual path…has to trigger an inner realization, a perception which pierces through the facile complacency of our usual encounter with the world to glimpse the insecurity perpetually gaping underfoot. When this insight dawns, even if only momentarily, it can precipitate a profound personal crisis. It overturns accustomed goals and values, mocks our routine preoccupations, leaves old enjoyments stubbornly unsatisfying.” [Bhikkhu Bodhi]

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for the upper image source, click on the link: ‘Chulalongkorn day’ on this page

enigma of hiccups

Posted on October 20, 2014 by tiramit

POSTCARD#98: Bangkok/Chiang Mai flight: M has the hiccups but can’t remember the English word for it and asks me: How you say sa-oog in English Toong-Ting? Thai onomatopoeia describes it well – and just as she’s asking the question, by way of example, the involuntary existential hiccup arrives. She recovers from the small jolt and looks at me with a kind of inner alertness. I tell her it’s a hiccup and she laughs – it’s the name of a character in a cartoon movie [How To Train Your Dragon 2]. I show her how to hold her breath for as long as she can, take a quick in-breath, and then keep on doing that. But no worries, we’ll be landing soon and that’ll divert her attention. The descent is quite bumpy… turbulent hiccups in the outer world. Luggage compartments overhead rattle and creak in the vibration. For a moment there’s an awareness of tremendous velocity, vulnerability, and the mind conjures up some kind of explanation for it. I feel like we’re on a road in the air, bumps caused by an imagined uneven road surface; a highway in the sky… a bridge that spans the distance from Bangkok to Chiang Mai – descending from the heavens now on this huge curved span all the way down to the surface of the planet.

There’s the sound of hydraulics, down go the wheels and the earth rises up to meet us. We are 300 people contained in a structure the size of a building, careering along at 200 mph in a collision course with the Earth. The deep uncertainty of our situation fills my awareness for a moment, then there’s the soft bump and we’re down. Wheels take the weight, first one side then the other, the deep lurch, sink-down/bounce-back as it settles and the engines roar like the dragon in M’s cartoon movie. The end of quite a long journey; Chiang Mai/Hat Yai, via Bangkok and home again for M. It’s just another arrival for me, there’ll be a departure again on 30 October; I’m traveling most of the time. Thirty years on the road, the default link with my own culture is not as important as it was. Thailand is my country of choice now and for the rest of my life. I can be M’s teacher of English until I’m old and grey – one of a minority of West/East migrants assimilating with the host country. The story of how the US came to be… identity is a created thing

Out of the plane and along the corridor, M walking along beside me with her little bag; the totality of her being, head to toe, is inside my field of vision… so small. She seems to be all-right with everything and all the events so far; hiccups are gone and chatting about all kinds of stuff I can’t quite hear. I have to guess what she’s saying and comment with appropriate responses like: really? oh yes, hmmm… and that’s working okay until there’s something that sounds like a question: Toong-Ting, when you were in your mummy’s tummy, before you were borned, you didn’t breathe, right? and I say, Right! confirming this truth. She’s still thinking about holding her breath to stop hiccups. After that there’s a fairly complex observation on the enigma of hiccups and life in general. Sounds interesting but I can’t quite understand it because I missed the first part. We walk on through the long corridors in the arrivals and out to the taxis: really? oh yes, hmmm…

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‘As all waves are in the ocean, so are all things physical and mental in awareness. Hence awareness itself is all-important, not the content.’ [Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That (261)]

worlds

Posted on October 15, 2014 by tiramit

POSTCARD #97: Bangkok 06:00 hours: Heavy rain, the sound of it is hypnotic. M sits at the breakfast table, eyes glazed over and chewing in slow motion, falls into a dream in mid-chew and needs a gentle poke to remind her to keep going… not properly awake yet; this world emerging from the one before. Somebody says there’s no time left – got to go now. M holds up her watch to look at the time and beneath her raised elbow the plate is taken away to the kitchen sink, clink-ding, and all around there’s a kind of speeded-up blur of movement – things vanish, table top is wiped. M, still in the dream maybe, looking at her watch, unsticks it from where it’s gotten slightly adhered to skin; it’s a blue and yellow bubble-like kiddy object, I ask her if she is good at telling the time, she looks at the flower-patterned dial and thinks for a moment; I no can tell you Toong-Ting (her name for me)… meanwhile all around us, doors open and close, toilets flush and there’s a clatter of voices as the whole scene gets folded into itself and packed away… suitcases zipped up. It’s as if there are at least two versions of this particular reality running at the same time.

I ask M if she learned about telling the time in school; only the Thai way. I don’t know in English how to say… I’d forgotten about the Thai way of telling the time, of course, it’s a slightly different system [link], and I’m reminded there are other perceptions of the world that run parallel to the Western way. No time for discussion, we’re hustled out the door to the car that takes us to the airport – but unprepared for the huge puddle at the gate. M gets her feet wet as she’s climbing in the car, sits in the back with me, takes wet foot out of rubber slipper and asks me for a tissue; something to dry her feet with. I don’t have anything except for a crumpled one in my pocket; unfolding it carefully and she says, Did you sneeze in it Toong-Ting? I tell her no I didn’t; looks at it doubtfully… dries her foot.

The rest of the journey is about the car making its way through flooded areas and the sloshing sound beneath where we are sitting. M looking around wide-eyed, listening – there’s another world out there through the thin fabric of the vehicle… so near. All kinds of splashing but the rain doesn’t last long, we can see it starting to ease off and when we reach the airport there’s blue sky and sunshine, as if the rain had never happened.

Out of the car, and we have to say bye-bye to mummy who’s not coming, a hug and they’re a bit tearful. So there’s only us now but we’ve done this before, been on a few journeys together. Through the Xray, the check-in and into departures. We find two seats and M wants to use the iPad for her Minecraft… all kinds of apps with their sudden ringtones wake me up in the night reminding me they need to be upgraded. Sharing the iPad with M means I don’t get overly attached to it and when I do have access, there’s a sense of urgency; writing as in text-message minimalism. A lightness too, because being with a 10 year old who speaks English as a foreign language reduces gravity and the slow moving dinosaur of thinking about things for too long.

Shortly after that we’re boarding, the flight leaves on time and the great leap up… catapulted into the sky, 5 miles above the surface of the planet. M is quietly looking around, a discrete twirling and spinning of small head, checking out everything inside the aircraft and out through the window; fluffy clouds in a pale blue heaven realm – the world is a simulation, overlay upon overlay of illusions I feel I’m deeply familiar with…

‘There is no thing there. There is no real substance, no solidity, and no self-existent reality. All there is, is the quality of experience itself. No more, no less. There is just seeing, hearing, feeling, sensing, cognizing. And the mind naming it all is also just another experience.’ [Ajahn Amaro]

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