Tag Archives: Buddhism

‘the world is the mind’

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POSTCARD#77: Delhi: There’s nobody here. Step right out of myself and look in, peep through the windows, knock on the door, ring the bell… anybody home? Try the door handle, it’s not locked, go in… hello? Walk through the empty rooms; the teapot is warm, teaspoon in the sink. Evidence, somebody lives here – look, there’s the laptop on the desk, a brightly illuminated screen. It’s a Google map of India. Click on the little yellow man and place him in a location to get ‘street view’. There he is standing on the surface of the planet. We are in Delhi, presently facing South and on our right, 4000 miles away in a westerly direction is London, 4½ hours behind Delhi time. Keep going on from there over the Atlantic and we come to New York, 3500 miles further on, and 9½ hours behind Delhi time. Further west, over the mountains and many horizons, arriving in San Francisco, another 2500 miles, and 12½ hours behind Delhi time. On we go in a westerly direction until time comes to an end in a zigzag line in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It’s the International Date Line. After that it’s officially a different day. Continue from there, and we come to Japan, and Seoul, Korea, and South East Asia, then Bangladesh and I’m in Delhi again, back to the time zone I’m in now, except that it’s yesterday… it’s not, of course, it’s the same day, it’s always the same day.

Absent from present time, there’s this long journey that lies ahead… I’m already on the plane. And now I’m arriving at the destination, going around in that place and here and there, everything is squeezed into just three weeks. Then the long return journey, exactly the same as it was going out only the other way round, and glad to be back again. Wow! How was the trip? …no I haven’t left yet, I’m just flying around in the world in my head. Got a ticket with my name on it, date of departure, passport valid – confirmed, registered, subject to limitations, and causes, and conditions, and the operating system that’ll take me there. I am ‘taken’. It’s about the process, no Controller, it goes on automatic pilot. There’s no ‘self’ in the equation – the deed is done and there is no doer – using the Passive Voice language function to express the Buddhist Truth of not-self (anatta).

Sounds are heard, food is tasted, and the chill wind of the southwest monsoon is felt upon the skin. And there’s nobody there that feels it unless I put together an identity composite in Active Voice: ‘I feel the chill’ – ‘I think, therefore I am’. It has to be a strongly assertive statement because the sense of ‘I’ has arisen simply through thinking it’s there and when I stop thinking about it, it’s not there. There are only the Five Khandas. Necessary to have conviction, believe it’s there. *‘I believe for every drop of rain that falls a flower grows, I believe that somewhere in the darkest night a candle glows’. Not impossible. Language tells a story, creates a fiction that I can get lost in; only partly aware that it’s a constructed thing and most of the time I’m clinging to a concept of selfhood, maintaining an assumed identity that’s dependent on updates and new software. Selfing is grasped-at, held, identified-with. Consumerism insists ‘self’ is a religion, but the world is seen to have moved on just a little bit, always, and all this is included in its diversity in the process of becoming something else.

‘Consciousness doesn’t ‘see’ or ‘experience’ a world through a mind, but rather the world is the mind (in the broadest sense of the word) that is ‘seen’ or ‘experienced’ by Consciousness.’ [Rupert Spira, The Ever-Present Seamlessness of Experience]

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Excerpts from an earlier post passive voice based on an idea that arose from a post found in: Just A Little Dust
*Note: ‘I believe that every drop of rain that falls….’ is a quote from the song “I Believe” (1952) composed at the start of the Korean War.

 

 

the smell of rain

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DELHI-SKY_11_6_2013POSTCARD#76: Delhi: Standing outside in the rain that’s just beginning, bare feet in rubber slippers. Can’t see clearly in this indistinct light, eyes still dazzled by the intense blue sky and sunshine of the hot season now coming to an end. I look up at the pearly grey rain clouds, water vapour becomes form in the vaulted dome of sky. A sprinkle of moisture on my glasses, hair damp, arms feel cool. Wet hands, finger moves to lips, the taste of it… and the smell of rain, a wonderful fragrance of earthy greenness. A mist of invisible particles in the air around the tall trees here, near to the park, where we are.

The smell of rain reminds me of something, triggers a memory and the mind scans through the files containing everything that’s known – looking for a reference, a precedent for this experience. Nothing found… a proximity search, closest value, nearest match? Traces of a familiarity created by this fragrance but connected with what? No associated recall, I have sensory input but no source memory… only the physiological function of the sense of smell itself, inherited from ancestors with a developed awareness of the approach of rain. Who’s to say? A prehistoric being may have been standing here, in this exact place where I am now, sniffing the air as I’m doing now, and conscious experience of the scent of rain would be no different for that human being then as it is for me now – except that this kind of thing is not in my vocabulary… only the nostalgia of smell.

Take shelter inside the house, doors open as wide as they’ll go. Listening to the rain falling on the tiles outside, it has the quality of a whisper. An immeasurable mass of individual raindrops merged together in waves of tiny collisions, thousand and thousands of small finger snapping sounds, high frequency applause. The generosity of rain – all these other rain drops still on the way down, elongated streaks of stretched-out water pulled by gravity, crashing into the earth – the miracle of it takes my breath away.

A crow flies in from the northside, craw… craw…. Flying in the rain. The sound gets louder and louder as the crow flies over the house, craw… craw…. At the patio doors I hear it pass above me and on through the rain in a southerly direction, over the park, craw… craw…. The calls are further away, echo off the walls of tall buildings on the far side of the park. Fainter and fainter until there’s no sound at all – only the act of listening. Awareness poised in a huge silence that feels like it’s about to become something else… a hesitation before the next thought arises. Tiny sounds of birdsong far away, and incidental thinking episodes float through. Awareness moves through thoughts like a bird flutters through the branches of a tree – the interval between thoughts, the space that happens before the next thought arises, and the space between moments.

Awareness of thought and the empty space surrounding it. Awareness of one object that includes awareness of another – and the awareness that knows this. Contemplate the state of the body and contemplate the mind contemplating that and everything that led to this….

‘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]

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Source for image here

the jitensha metaphor

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penny_farthing_bike_grand_bi-999pxPOSTCARD#75: Delhi: We bought an exercise bike from a Japanese lady who was leaving Delhi. It was a surprisingly large heavy thing with horns (NOVA fitness 700u). The delivery guys carried it into the spare room and that’s where it lives now. Jiab called it the jitensha – Japanese for bicycle:じてんしゃ remembering the bicycle she used to have when we lived in Japan. It got stolen – a sad story. So this big jitensha became the reincarnation of the one that was lost long ago. We started a routine of using the exercise bike and ‘jitensha’ became a verb, ‘to jitensha’, as in: are you going to jitensha? Jiab is Thai, and English is an improvisation, she speaks the language like playing a musical instrument. Everything is fun and it is such a lovely onomatopoeic word: ji-ten-sha… jitensha-jitensha-jitensha-jitensha, like the action of pedal crank, spinning chain wheel and everything about our jitensha is metaphorical; cycling through time in the present moment, situated firmly in the here-and-now, and the real sensation of going someplace but there are no wheels.

I get on the jitensha first thing in the morning. It’s the hot season, ceiling fan spinning, sleepy in the darkness and I wake up whizzing through streets and pathways of the mind, wind in my face and my eyes closed. Always downhill, no need to balance or steer or pay attention to where I’m going, there’s only this pleasing familiarity with the bicycle state of mind. Usually a four or five mile jaunt, not too hard, upper body swinging side to side with the pedaling movement, bare feet in pedal straps. Nothing else to do or worry about, thoughts arrive and depart, leaving fragments of things that form into something new, a memory of an event that happened long ago. Ah yes, I remember that… hold it for a moment then let it go. Now this, now that, things of no consequence. Focus on each one as it appears and disappears somewhere in these great landscapes seen rushing by.

Maybe it’s the blood circulation, a pleasing rush, and slight pressure behind the eyes seems to drive the thinking process. The intensity of making things into other things and the world out there is seen from the point of view of ‘me’ in here… the metaphorical self. I am on the receiving end of all this, I am the face in the mirror – look, that’s me. I think, therefore I am… a passing view of self and the hollowness of it all. Let it go and it’s gone, “the closer you look, the more it’s not there”. And then I’m inside a curious extended, freeze-framed thought moment, the all-inclusive presence of it and a sense of immensely distant things. No reference points and nothing left to think about. I’m not aware the thoughts have gone, just know they’re not there anymore. All that remains is the activity of Mind, not familiar with the ‘unthinking’ state and trying to fill the empty space with something, anything. Then that’s seen too, it falls away, and the jitensha spins off towards the horizon…

‘Wherever you go, you carry with you the sense of here and now. This is what distinguishes any present experience from memory. It reveals that space and time are in you and not the other way around. Most people are not acquainted with the sense of their being but only with the knowledge of their doing.’ [Wu Hsin]

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The Wu Hsin quote comes from the superaalifragilistic blog/ Behind The Mind: The Lost Writings of Wu Hsin –   G   R   A   T   I   T   U   D   E   –

 

world without end

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POSTCARD#74: Delhi: Ping! An email hits the inbox. It’s from the travel agent, about my flight to UK: Delhi/London, and connecting flight to Inverness Scotland. I see for the first time that the whole journey door-to-door takes place on the same day (allowing for +4½ hours time difference). Didn’t notice that… and another thing is that the date of travel is the 6th July which happens to be my birthday. It’s a time-and-space thing, I’ll have the longest birthday I’ve ever had in my life. Delhi departure time: 10.25 am, London arrival time: 2.50 pm (local time) then Inverness arrival time: 6.00 pm, and the folks there are saying we should go out and celebrate, have dinner somewhere. It’ll be a very long stretched-out, spaghetti-like, spatiotemporal birth-day.

But that’s not all; I remember now, in the Northern region (57.4717° N, 4.2254° W), it never really gets dark in the summertime, being near to the land of the midnight sun. So my birthday will continue in a glimmer of daylight through the night of the 6th July, into the dawn and the brightness of the next day, then all through the night again, into the next day and on and on like that for the rest of the summer. There’s a sense of birthing, and a feeling of forever about it, ‘world without end’. I’m swept away in a great ocean of memories. Everything that ever happened in my childhood flashing before the eyes. The mind racing through everything contained in the system, and clicking all known picture files. Hundreds of windows all opening at the same time; layer upon layer of memories. The thought that there is a place called Home… ‘home is where the heart is’, what does it mean, how does this make sense to me now?

Question: where is home? Sit quietly and clear the mind for a bit, consciously aware of the sensation of the breath gently touching the inner surfaces of nasal passages. This feeling is the same for everyone. Look out through the eyes and see the sky, the same blue sky everyone else is seeing – and not just the sky, the physiological process of seeing the sky is the same for everyone. The consciousness that recognizes this sense of subjectivity is the same for me as it is for you and everyone, everywhere, as it has been all the way through history. I can know how they felt and understood the world in ancient times; the sky they looked at and sounds they heard, fragrances they smelt, food tasted, surfaces touched and their mind responses. All of that is the same for me here and now as it was for the ancient people in their time. The ‘me’ and ‘mine’ I experience is not different from the ‘me’ and ‘mine’ anyone else experienced in the past, or at this moment, or any time in the future. The body/mind organism that receives the experience of this ever-present sensory data through the Five Khandas, is the same for me as it is for everyone on the planet. Outer and inner are both parts of the One, the Same, Inseparable – This is ‘Home’.

‘…the Buddha practised deep embodiment – really inhabiting his body, not sticking on the surface at sense-contact, but going inwards through breathing to where the subtle energy-channels of the body open, find their still centre and suffuse the practitioner with happiness and ease. In contact with that, the mind drops its wayward thinking, its sluggishness, agitation and passion and gathers at one point. ‘Jhāna’ he called it, ‘touching the Deathless with one’s body,’ the meditative entry to nibbāna. Note: not ‘witnessing’ or ‘watching’, but touching.’ [Ajahn Sucitto, Surface, Depth and Beyond]

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Image: the midnight sun in Altafjord in Norway. Source: Wikipedia 
Note: excerpts from an earlier post: now as it was then, are included here

the silence of objects

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POSTCARD#73: Delhi: The rain stops around 5am. It’s been going most of the night, rattling down on the atelier roof window. Pleasantly deafening… the novelty of it. Rain! So long since we’ve had rain – the hot season is coming to an end! It’s enough to just lie in bed and listen to it falling in great patterns of syncopated rhythm I feel must have had a beginning somewhere… drifting in and out of sleep until it stops. Stillness, the sense of a sailing ship becalmed. The feeling of the in-breath in the nasal cavities, allowing the universe to enter and pass through this sensory organism. The deep knowledge of it – awareness of these surroundings, these circumstances and this quiet state of at-ease alertness.

Daylight. Time to get up, bare feet on cool stone slabs: pita, pata, pit, pat, pata, pit, pit… stop and look out the window; everything is totally wet out there. Aware, suddenly, of cold feet, consciousness of a physical object, contact with the world. Aware of thought and aware of no-thought. Awareness of the cognitive function and waking up to this pastel coloured pinkish, grey-blue dawn light spreading through the rooms, along the corridor leading to the front and out through glass doors to the tiled patio, shiny with wetness… and up there, a silver sky. In the darkness of the room things slowly begin to be seen, and the memory of the night before returns; objects, a pen, a cup, papers scattered around, left in the position they were in, unmoved. Cup handle sticks out, waiting for fingers to come and hold it… a quiet presence. The silence of inanimate things, neutrality, accepting it all as it is, awareness of objects and non-objects, the motionless space where everything is situated, context and content, awareness of that which normally passes unseen.

Tall buildings all around us, standing there like huge objects placed in a vast landscape… the clouds above, layer upon layer up into the vaulted sky. Their shadows cast over our small house, single storied, old wood-frame windows, thatched structure on top, roof garden and trees at the door… as if we were in a mountain valley surrounded by tall cliffs and the sun reaches us for only a few hours a day. Our perception of the universe is as tiny as it is for micro-organisms that live at the bottom of the ocean, remotely aware that far above them the sun is shining. The slightest change in light conditions in that underwater glimmer, the smallest increase in light calibration enters consciousness and brings with it a great brilliance of illumination. They can contemplate being present to their cold darkness, knowing that this is not the only experience in the world because the sun is shining inside their heart.

“If you want to awaken all of humanity, then awaken all of yourself, if you want to eliminated the suffering in the world, then eliminate all that is dark and negative in yourself. Truly the greatest gift you have to give is that of your own self-transformation.” [Lao Tzu]    

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Note: this post contains excerpts from an earlier post titled Spaciousness of Being.
Image: Francisco de Zurbarán, Bodegón or Still Life with Pottery Jars, 1636
Thanks to: Living Success 3D for the Lao Tzu quote, which appears in the post titled: The Greatest Gift to Give.

reality construct

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120420131786bPOSTCARD#72: Delhi: In the dream I’m dreaming I’ve woken up… views of a room I know, bright daylight comes in through windows, the familiarity of furniture. A puzzled alertness, open my eyes and I’m looking at the ceiling fan… it wobbles slightly as it spins. Looking at the plain white painted ceiling, the dustiness of places that are never touched. Where am I? Stranded on the sofa… recovery from the afternoon nap. Don’t remember falling asleep. The quality of light coming in tells me we’re past the maximum temperature of the day +40oC (+104oF) and easing away from the oppressive heat. Children call from the street, it must be late afternoon maybe 3.30pm or thereabouts. All around me is the clutter of an activity that took place just before I fell asleep: a pen, scattered notes and books on the floor next to me, the remains of a cup of oolong tea. Everything held, objects quietly wait in their silence – if a tree falls in the forest…

How can I know if reality is really ‘real’? I’m in my room creating my world; everyone else is in their room creating their world and we’re all co-creating the idea of being in a room together in one shared reality. Language names things, creates attributes; diverse patterns are matched together in one huge continuity that includes all the characteristics of what we created in our individual rooms and the consensus view is that this is it… reality. Then something happens, maybe we just wake up to it, maybe a major event occurs and suddenly we see that our reality is a construct.

Reminds me of the flight over here, 4½ hours from Bangkok, and nothing to do but watch the movie. Each seat has its own individual screen and after a while I want to get up to walk around. Take off the headset and stand up from my seat, surprised how dark it is with all the window shades drawn. Also, strangely, it’s completely quiet, except of course for the hiss of air pressure and hmmm of the engines. All the passengers locked into watching their own small personal movies, reflected glow of videos create pools of flickering colour on their faces as I pass. Their headsets plugged into their audio channel and meanwhile, in the cabin all around them there’s no sound at all. It’s dark, colourless, inhospitable.

Mindfulness, I’m between two  realities; the ignored environment of the aircraft and the accumulated video distraction. As I’m going along the aisle, a passenger opens his mouth and out comes this large uninhibited yawn, howling like a dog – deafened by the headset, immersed in the samsara of his movie, can’t hear himself and nobody else can hear him either. Approximately 300 people on this aircraft, inert and hypnotized, layered in illusion. Let’s pretend we’re not here. But why bother? We’re not here anyway. Are we anywhere that could be called ‘here’? A long tube with wings and pointy end, somewhere high above the highest mountain in airless space and hurtling along at 500 mph?

Conscious experience, subject/object, not-twoism. A connectedness on every level – origin unknown. Any belief in an external creator is not relevant, a figure of speech, the metaphor, speculative conjecture. Anything beyond the present state of consciousness must be so different from what’s happening here and now, none of the rules apply. I’m in awe – I simply don’t know.

I get up from the sofa and walk along the passageway to take a shower. Hot air, and the experience of containment in a body with four limbs, a head at the top, feet down there, appearing one at a time: flip-flop-flip in soft slippers. It looks like a long way down. Ooo! Vertigo…

‘We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.’ [Pierre Teilhard de Chardin]

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Delhi’s daytime temperature was over 45 degrees C on Tuesday 10 June. Raisina Hill was witness to a mirage, an optical phenomenon caused by the bending of light as it passes from colder to warmer air.— Photo: Meeta Ahlawat, The Hindu Newspaper
Note: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin quote is taken from a lovely post titled: On Life, Death, & Original Sin in Julianne Victoria’s blog: Through the Peacock’s Eyes. Note: Reality Construct post includes excerpts from the channeled Darryl Lanka/Bashar talks.

storm archetype

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DE31_PG1_4-COL_WEA_1924668gPOSTCARD#71: Delhi: It came in the late afternoon, rush hour traffic was at a standstill, tree branches tumbling in the road and all kinds of things blowing around. Later somebody said it was like a whirlwind, sudden chaos for twenty minutes… the world was falling apart. Then suddenly it was over, only the devastation left behind. Earlier in the day it was obvious something was happening but I didn’t know what exactly. There’d been this strange brown coloured sky all through the morning, and I’d considered it but wasn’t paying much attention because I’d arrived in Delhi only the day before. Everything was weird, the whole thing; first day back after an absence of three months and all I could seem to focus on at the time was this incredible heat. Googled the weather later: hot and dry winds, max 46oC today; higher than body temperature, hotter outside than it is inside…

Step out of the air-con room, into the lobby and the heat is like… a thing, a presence, a semi-liquid jello-like substance that fits exactly into every corner of the room. The ceiling fan just stirs it up, slooshes it around, slaps it off the walls. I make my way through the lobby heat to the main room where another air-con is running and into the cool again. Check the phone, and there’s a text message from Jiab saying they expect stormy weather today. That’s when I noticed the sky was this curious brown colour, an apocalyptic feeling. Never seen it like this. Go to the glass doors, take a closer look at it, open the door and step outside. The heat takes my breath away. The sky is filled with brown smoke – later I discovered it was dust, fine sand from all the dry areas surrounding Delhi. I touch the metal parts of the door and ouch! It burns my hand. Disorientated, a few seconds of panic… the heat will dry up all the fluids in my body. Eyes like slits, avoid any sudden intake of breath for fear of it drying up all the moisture in the throat. The planet Mars must be something like this. Back inside, close the door, the cool of the room again.

A couple of hours after that, the storm started. Really immense gusts of wind, tree tops swirling around like I’ve never seen them do before. Windows rattle in their frames, bang, crash. Breaking glass… the wind must have blown in a window! How can that be, what’s happening? Outside there are people running for shelter, and a large tree-branch just separates from the rest of the tree, long strip of bark left behind, tumbles over and crump lands on the roof of a parked car. Crashing noises upstairs and I run up there to see. Open the door to the roof terrace, and peep out through the gap, holding the door as it gusts against my weight. Parts of the thatched roof of our sun shelter are gone…

Sky is full of twigs, leaves and flying debris… black shapes against a brown light, and the strangest thing I’ve ever seen: there are birds everywhere – fluttering in the air, coping with it, a frantic flap of wings, bodies flung upwards suddenly – off to the side in unnatural ways. It’s like the end of the world; the air has become the sea, boats at the mercy of the waves. Pull the door shut, and go back downstairs, lie low until it settles.

IMG_1051“When the sensation that I am in control of my life and must make it happen ends, then life is simply lived and relaxation takes place. There is a sense of ease with whatever is the case and an end to grasping for what might be.” [Richard Sylvester]

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Upper photo source: The Hindu Newspaper. Lower photo: Parts of the sun shelter after the storm. Note: This post was created from notes made on June 1st in Delhi

the unexpected thing

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IMG_1043bird1POSTCARD#70: Chiang Mai/Delhi flight: The journey from Chiang Mai to Delhi unfolds as a sequence of corridors within corridors, connected end-to-end with moving walkways, security points, departure areas and flight gates. Before that happened there was the sad goodbye scene with little M at Chiang Mai airport drop-off point. It was like I’d already gone – she was stuck in silence, looking at me with these deep eyes, holding mindfulness of this moment as a child does. And the question: how could this be happening? Not coming back for four months? A long time if you’re only 10 years old. Then I’m waving bye-bye, her car accelerating away and M waving back to me through the window, small windscreen-wiper movement of the palm: bye-bye Toong-Ting, and she disappears round the corner. I turn towards the queue at the security gate and the journey begins.

Here in the bardo of the in-between; 1 hour from Chiang Mai to Bangkok, a short transit there, and 4½ hours to Delhi. Not far, but we have all the processing to go through. Three, maybe four X-ray machines; take off belt, remove shoes, go through, get dressed again. Then the immigration zone, show passport, scan everything, and stamp passport thump! I am who I say I am… look at the photo – yep, that’s me. Out into an area of duty free shops the size of a small town; gold watches, cosmetics and leather bags. Follow the signage, stop at the same coffee shop I was in last time, and the unexpected thing occurs: a small bird flutters by, perches on a glass wall. Small head swivels around, lost the way out, or maybe doesn’t know there’s any reality other than this; hatched in a nest in the roof structure… this is a world of metal trees. I take a photo and it flies away. Down to the flight gate, more waiting before we’re allowed through the walkway into the aircraft, and I can find my seat – the whole point of the exercise. Squeeze into the allotted space, chair moulded to fit the human body. Fasten seat belt, take off… these are the days of miracles and wonder. Look out at the sky, clouds, and the surface of the planet. I am a tiny speck of life, a microscopic cell in a universe so vast I cannot understand the totality of it and live in a world of concepts.

They serve the meal then shades are drawn and we watch the movie. Stewardesses appear in the darkness with drinks then disappear like the kuroko in Japanese Kabuki dressed in black, appear on stage like shadows, change stage scenery in the middle of the performance and disappear. I think of M and remember finding her one day in the shadows of a late afternoon turned into early evening having forgotten to put the lights on as it started to get dark. Face illuminated in the bright light of the smartphone display, a mesmerised 10 year-old sitting there for hours, didn’t hear me when I came in. Didn’t look up when I sat next to her, the reflected digital display making colours flicker on her small face. That’s probably what she’s doing now…

The plane arrives in Delhi, through the airport formalities and out into the immense heat. I get to the house, and looking around to see what’s changed in the three months I’ve been away… then the unexpected thing occurs, I see the shadow of a bird perched on the fencing, take a photo and it flies away….

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“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)]

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Upper photo: the bird in Bangkok airport. Lower photo: the bird in my back yard in Delhi.
Note: Kuroko reference from: The Ptero Card
– G  R  A  T  I  T  U  D  E  –

melodic intervals

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IMG_1030bPOSTCARD#69: Chiang Mai: Tuktuk gets stuck in traffic, comes to a stop, driver brakes and switches off. The large sound of the 2-stroke engine is gone with the flick of a switch. Suddenly it’s quiet, only metallic creaks and random traffic noises. The outside world enters my space – inner merged with outer – no walls, just a canvas roof supported by metal poles bolted to an engine with wheels and a seat. It’s like camping when we were kids, inside a tent, domestic activities in the open-air. Gentle winds blowing through, reflected heat from other vehicles and the slightly surprising presence of tarmac. City infrastructure – experiencing it for the first time… the world has always been here, I’ve just been busy with the concept of it and didn’t notice.

I hear my phone and search for it in the bag… listening, but it’s not mine, ringtone is totally different. It’s that kind of high frequency awareness I seem to have these days, the melody playing in the sound of air-conditioners, ceiling-fans and anything that whistles and sings. Then I hear this single word, ‘hello?’ coming from somewhere behind me in the column of stationary traffic. I turn to see; it’s a girl sitting on the back of a motorbike, holding a phone to her ear. A conversation begins, quite loud, but I can’t make sense of what she’s saying – not that I’d want to… anyway she’s speaking in Thai, which is difficult enough and also, I notice, she’s eating an ice-cream cone at the same time: “wah ee ah in ai-eem ah” no words, it seems, just incoherent mumbling. So, well I’m vaguely curious about this, thinking how can she expect anybody to know what she’s talking about with a mouthful of ice-cream going at the same time? Her boyfriend (driver of the motorbike) says something to her, and he’s eating an ice-cream too: “oo ap ai ao a-lai ab?” mouth open trying to let the coldness out. Coping with a large bite of ice-cream, he speaks with lips protruding in a singsong, bird-like way, all-vowel articulation – a kind of breathy thing. She replies, and it amazes me… they can understand each other perfectly well.

It’s like the mating dialogue of exotic animals in National Geographic. I listen and realise I can also understand some of what they’re saying (see below). No consonants in Thai, no sharp sounds like /s/ /sh/ /ch/ /t/ /d/ /k/ that require lip, teeth and tongue coordination and thus difficult (impossible) to articulate without an explosion of strawberry vanilla ice-cream from the mouth. The Thai language doesn’t have that problem; it’s mostly vowels, like an arrangement of melodic intervals, five tones: rising, falling, high, low and middle. Listen for the tones and you can always understand what’s being said (if you’re Thai). Words are not spoken, they’re sung. Thai is a tune played on the acoustic wind instrument that is the human vocal tract.

Tuktuk driver (a lady) keys the ignition; other engines start up like the clearing of throats. Gears engage and there’s movement in the column of cars, a kind of careful jostling for space as everybody gets ready to go. Things start to speed up, we’re all moving as one, then spaces open in the traffic. At some point, the motorbike roars up behind me and overtakes – girl on the back, speaking on the phone again, boyfriend in front with ice-cream cone held in his teeth, gives throttle to the machine and they accelerate away…

‘All we know of a thought is the experience of thinking, all we know of a sensation is the experience of sensing, all we know of a sight is the experiencing of seeing, all we know of a sound is the experience of hearing…. And all that is known of thinking, sensing, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling is the knowing of them. And what is it that knows this knowing? Only something that itself has the capacity to know could know anything. So it is knowing that knows knowing.’ [Rupert Spira]

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 Notes on the ice-cream pronunciation: She says: “wah ee ah in ai-eem, ah” (wàt-dee kha gin ai-dtim kha: “hi, [excuse me] I’m eating ice-cream”) สวัสดีค่ะกินไอติมค่ะ And he says: “oo ap ai ao a-lai ab? (pôot gàp krai ao a-rai krab: “who are you talking to, what does he want?”) พูดกับใครเอาอะไรครับ ?
Excerpts included here from an earlier post: castles made of sand

flying away

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Phkt2POSTCARD#68: Phuket: We’re leaving today. Packing the bags takes up most of the early morning and M doesn’t say anything. Very soon we’ll check out, say goodbye to our rooms and never be back. The enigma of the hotel room, a location in time and space inhabited for a short time then it’s gone. Furniture is used; marble floor walked on – years and years of housekeeping staff have swept, swabbed and polished this floor. Such a beautiful thing ignored, M sits with me. Internet connection not good, no iPad – flying away in her mind already. Jumps up and goes over to the thin lace curtain at the window, pulls it around her narrow body, extends a leg and points her toe – looks along and down at how the folds of fabric fall like an exotic gown to the floor, then spins around in a twirl and skips away to somewhere else in the room.

The others are busy packing away bathroom things; nothing remains for me to do here. Sitting in the upholstered chair, see how that feels…. breath enters like a wind gusting in, withdraws. It comes back, blows through then it’s not there again. A great emptiness opens up, I might easily fall into a joyful state and believe that this is “it” but everything changes, anicca, everything changes. It’s about the on-going experiential response – what else could it be about? Skin, muscle, flesh, and these mysterious organs held by ligaments bonded into a skeletal structure. I am the context for the outer content. The whole investigation is one that is open to following where the mind leads, see where it goes, how it reacts. Conscious awareness of how the mind is able to concentrate and to what extent – passageways of insight open in an instant and are gone.

Then later in the breakfast room, M selecting food items from silver dishes, everything done in a dream, eyes glazed over; watching a movie in her head, a story about what’s going on around her. Holding her big white plate so it’s level, places it with mindfulness on the table, descending like a UFO landing. Sits next to me – I feel her presence/absence. She likes the hotel silverware flashing like swords. Takes the large fork and stabs a sausage as if it were trying to escape – that wriggling sausage can’t get away. Begins a vigorous sawing motion with knife held in the right hand, breakfast table moves with the vibration, coffee nearly spills from the cup. Cuts off less than 1/4 inch, lays down knife, fork transferred to the right hand like a weapon in battle… stabs the tiny portion of sausage and the trapped morsel travels up to the mouth. I count more than 20 chewing movements, up/down up/down, masticated beyond belief. She’s lost interest, forgotten about it. A few other nibbles and the rest of it is left untouched.

IMG_1004Wait in the hotel lobby, look at people we don’t know, will never see again, then into the van and away to the airport. Through the crowds, check-in, departure gate, boarding and we’re in our seats. The takeoff sends me to sleep, I have a short dream: gentle voices of friends talking, I hear my name mentioned with loving-kindness… it occurs to me that I’m dead. Wake up suddenly and ask M, beside me, did she say something? No answer, playing with her prince and princess dolls on the fold-down table. Silence, one held in each hand – relationships, a dialogue, events taking place in the mind…

‘The world outside is our consciousness…. It is not something separate and distinct. The object and the subject of perception inter-are. Without subject, there is no object; without object, there is no subject. They manifest at the same time. To see means to see something. The seer does not exist separately from the seen; they manifest at the same time. If you imagine that the seer is independent and goes out in order to see the seen, that is a mistaken perception.’ [Thich Nhat Hanh, “The Buddhist Understanding of Reality”]

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Upper image: Phuket island seen from the Southern viewpoint. Lower image: Chiang Mai seen from the air.
Notes from Ajahn Munindo’s talks included here.
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