Tag Archives: metta

the ‘that-one’

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POSTCARD #108: Chiang Mai: Stuck in a tuktuk at the intersection, a huge volume of traffic coming the other way. We’ll have to wait 10 minutes maybe. Driver switches off the engine, leans back and it’s suddenly quiet. This brings me some ease; mind is racing, I’m on the way to the computer repair shop with my laptop in the bag – no control of the cursor… can’t do anything. Frustration, and this traffic situation is not helping; the glaring red light demands attention, holds back a great torrent of beings ready to leap forward and fill up the space in the vast sweeping-along of things. It’s the New Year season, everybody going to, or coming back from some other place, some other time. Hard to believe it’s 2015, returning to the marker left here from 2014. No beginning, no end, only the cycle continuously refreshed, the evolving transformation.

Green light, driver flicks ignition and the 2-stroke engine comes to life. A few turns of the throttle and we’re away in a great clatter of sound; sharp turn left, then right, narrow streets, short cuts, speeding through passageways and corridors wherever there’s room to move. Then we’re there; into the car park, get out, pay the driver and up to the second floor. It takes a while to squeeze through the crowds of shoppers wandering around in a purchasing daze, and I’m rehearsing the storyline in my head; the computer just stopped working… there’s a window telling me there isn’t a keyboard connected… how can that be? Find the repair shop, get in and take a number, join the others waiting with their iPhones and devices. This could take a while, I open up the laptop, get it started so the technician will be able to see what the problem is.

Then something unexpected happens; It doesn’t do that thing anymore… it’s working normally now! A few more tests and yes, wow, there’s nothing wrong with it – how come? Go back to the desk, give them my number back; sorry I have to leave now, I’ll… em, be back later – thank you, bye-bye. A mixture of feelings; elation that it’s okay again, and how did it fix itself? Will it be allright now or is it going to freeze again? Down the escalator, out on street level and into another tuktuk. The answer comes to me on the way back; it must have been a bluetooth-link with another device in my apartment, and as soon as I took the machine out of that place, the bluetooth link became inactive. So how did I create the bluetooth-link? I don’t know exactly but I think my 10-year-old Thai niece, M, may have had something to do with it.

The journey back to the apartment goes without any major delay, green lights all the way. Up to the third floor, into the room and M is lying on the sofa with two iPads and her Samsung phone – she’s got a network going between the devices. Hello Toong-Ting, your computer is fixed now? She’s studying English at school. I ask her what she’s doing… I chat with myself, see? Her small hands and fingers operating three screens at the same time. So, how is she able to do that? It’s the… (hesitates, can’t remember the word) em… that one, you know? Points to the bluetooth icon, that one. Recently she has been using ‘that-one’ to take the place of any vocabulary she doesn’t know. It can be a noun or a verb or anything that makes sense and sounds right. Somewhere in the conversation she explains: The ‘that-one’ that-oned the ‘that-one’ (subject + verb + object: The bluetooth linked the keyboard). It’s all always a learning process…

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We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

[T.S. Eliot]

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H  A  P  P  Y    N  E  W   Y  E  A  R    B  L  O  G  S  T  E  R  S   2  0  1  5

snow in Thailand

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

IMG_1860In Eskimo languages there’s not just one word for snow, there are many (‘Smilla’s Sense of Snow’ by Peter Høeg). But it may be a linguistic characteristic (Washington Post), words are added on to the main word ‘snow’ to describe its qualities. Slushy old snow would appear like this: ‘slushyoldsnow’ or if the adjectives and modifiers of the noun are arranged differently, it could be like this: ‘snowoldslushy’ so it looks like a new word if you’re not an Eskimo. It doesn’t alter the fact that there are all kinds of snow, of course – I remember from a childhood in the North of Scotland – but I can’t find words for this kind of snow; dry, warm, and light cotton beach-wear…

IMG_1861If M was a bit older we’d be able to talk about what is real and what is not, and how ‘artificial’ is a word, a label, a concept. There isn’t anything in the world that’s artificial… everything is something. It’s only artificial when we compare it with the agreed-upon ‘real’ – another concept. You could just as well say the whole thing is artificial, and ‘nothing is real’ (strawberry fields forever). It’s all about words, doing their thing, like what HTML coding does for everything in the internet; we’re ‘linked’ to what we think is real, everything is a living representation of what it is.

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

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

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on the way to somewhere else

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IMG_1778POSTCARD #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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darkness

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POSTCARD #104: Delhi: 05.00 hrs: The sound of the generator – a power cut, no lights. Holding my phone so it shines like an electric torch I come out from the bedroom and through to the front of the house. Startled by the flashing light reflection in the large glass patio window; light beams swinging over the walls, forwards and back with the movement of walking. My own reflection catches me unawares at this early hour of the day confused by large sound of generator. It triggers a memory from long ago; some time before dawn, me and grandfather on the tractor going over the hill to see the sheep.

When I tell people my grandfather was a shepherd, there’s a moment of… let’s see, no words for it really – kinda Biblical, mediaeval? It helps to think of him like a veterinarian. We’d get down from the tractor and set off on the track across the hill. Grandfather with his huge steps and I must have been only nine or ten years old, holding the big old torch with both hands, aiming the beam along the path to ancient things, ancestors I never knew.

Grandfather had a shepherd’s crook; a long pole he used like a walking stick, but with an iron hook on the end to catch the sheep. On this night we mingled amongst the flock until he saw the one he was looking for, quickly caught its leg with the hook and it fell over on its side. I was then told to quickly hold its head. He was a big man, wore two totally ragged old jackets, one on top of the other. No polyester in those days, no machine-washable hooded shell coats with velcro fastenings and good-looking yellow nylon zipper. No, my grandfather looked like a homeless person.

He’d roll up the sleeve of his right arm, hands like the hoof and horn of the sheep itself; not beautiful hands, birthing hands. Push his fingers into the back end of the sheep, then his whole hand up past the wrist and part the way up the forearm. Quite a long time spent feeling with fingers in the darkness before birth, find the lamb’s feet and nose, and pull the whole thing out with a steaming slither and plop on the grass. I’d be at the other end, holding down the beast’s curled horns, struggling head, a fog of breath in the air, spittle froth, tongue, nostrils, and these wild, wide staring eyes. Then from behind me, there’d be this small bleat: mae….

On Grandfather’s signal I let go of the head, jump back and the sheep is up, turns around and long nose nuzzling the small bundle shivering on the grass. Mae…says the lamb. Baah…says the sheep, licking away the afterbirth around the face of the lamb… mae-ae-ae… baah-baah… mae-ae-ae… baah… mae-ae-ae… (sheep language). The whole thing quite astonishing. An event there on the side of a hill, illuminated in the beam of a torchlight in the long shadows of remembered past.

Fifty years later and I’m here in Delhi, about the same age as grandfather was then. Light the candle by the Buddha on the bookshelf – familiarity of candlewax, oil lamps and no electricity; it’s another day no different from that day then or any other day. Outside, a faint smell of dung; cows and sheep sleeping in some corner of the street, at rest in these urban surroundings as if they were in a landscape of fields and meadows.

“I am not yet born; provide me 
with water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk 
to me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light 
in the back of my mind to guide me.” [Prayer Before Birth, Louis Macniece]

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transparency

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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?

 

loving-kindness for the unloved

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POSTCARD#93: Chiang Mai: Nine-o’clock-in-the-morning rush downtown in a tuktuk, traffic is okay, no hold-up at the lights, one large swerve to the right and it’s a long straight run to the mall building where I’m headed – have to pay a phone bill, overdue for four months and they disconnected me. Sorry about that… ah well, they probably figured I was out of the country, no problem, I’d be back eventually. Foreigners (farangs) mix with the population here like benign extraterrestrials, disappear sometimes then reappear later.

Tuktuk takes me right into the mall car park, jump out, pay the driver and there are steps straight down into the basement arcade. Ask the lady there at Information for directions to the phone place and set off in the direction she indicates… can’t find it, searching and searching, it’s not there. So I go into  this other phone place and ask them if they know where the place I’m looking for is. Oh, they say, this is the place, you’re in it – yes, we changed the name, you see… laughter. Fine, okay, and I’m not sure if I’m happy, or a bit upset about it – what’s going on here? Have a quick look around; everybody wearing turquoise and lime green costumes to match the same colour-coordinated interior and huge logo above our heads. A total makeover, new look with pale pigmented, cosmetic faces of little women who smile all the time.

So this seems to be very welcoming, I give my number over at the desk and it takes a moment to realise I’m not talking to a woman but it’s a small man, not overtly feminized, but wearing orange lipstick and disconcerting dental brace — smiles open-mouthed and giggles… going for the orthodontic barbed-wire look. Some caution required here, these effeminate guys can be a bit bitchy, but he (she) is okay, self-effacing, small gestures, acting the part, making a thing out of not being able to speak English, and doesn’t hear when I reply in Thai. The upset feeling I was having is gone when I contemplate this example of the human condition. Compassion for what that must be like. The gist of it, though, is that they need to have my passport, and I didn’t bring it. There’s no way they can do this without a passport, sollee na kha (uses feminine gender honorific).

What to do? No point in getting upset, this is Thailand, nobody gets upset, if there’s any difficulty, it just goes into slo-mo and everybody is really, really careful… the tension in the air like a wine glass about to shatter when the violinist plays exactly the right high-pitched note in resonant frequency. And structural integrity gives way, POP!… but it doesn’t usually get that far – just prolonged holding. I can feel an accumulation of negativity – something unloved beginning to appear at the edge of my vision, gives me a poke in the ribs, Hey! Yeh, been here before; the aversion is about ‘me’ struggling to accept the reality of it being there. Accept it, allow it in to conscious awareness, let it be there… but I’m still struggling with it. It’s the thought I have to go back for my passport – but it’s about registration, that’s all, it’s normal, should be easy enough.

It’s somewhere around here that I realise I’m concocting this whole scenario based on an attached memory of things that aren’t very lovable – I can’t love that thing; unlovable, unloved. Kinda hopeless and childish, but I can have loving-kindness mettā for the feeling that I can’t do it; loving-kindness for my resistance to loving the unloved. Walk back along the corridor, up the steps and out across the car park, there’s a tuktuk. Tell the driver where to go and we’re speeding back up the way I came, slow down at the lights wide turn left and soon back at the apartment. Jump out, ask the driver to wait, into the building, up in the lift, in. Get the passport, down again and we’re off back downtown again, wide turn right after the lights, and a straight run back to the mall.

Back to the turquoise and  lime green renovated place and by this time things have woken up a bit, more people, more staff than customers. The ‘person’ with the dental work and orange lipstick greets me like an old friend. We get the paperwork done in about a minute and I’m out. Texting everybody to say hello: Hi, yes I’m here in Chiang Mai and it’s good to be back.

‘By reminding ourselves to have metta for the feelings we experience – not thinking about them or analysing them but going to the place in the body itself, to the mental quality, really embracing that – really being willing to feel those particular emotions, they become bearable. By changing our attitude to one of acceptance rather than of rejection, to interest, rather than just wanting to get rid of them, we find that they are things we can tolerate. Then they cease on their own, for all conditions are impermanent.’ [‘Universal Loving Kindness‘ by Ajahn Sumedho, Forest Sangha Newsletter, October 1997, Number 42]

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loving-kindness for the critical mind

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Chmai arrivalPOSTCARD#92: Chiang Mai: Writing this on the iPhone keyboard, shadowy index finger blocks out the whole letter. The letters ‘O’ and ‘P’ are difficult, I try to type ‘M’ and hit the backspace instead. Requires a certain kind of patience… it’s amazing what you can do if you have to. My computer is with the technician — went there immediately after arriving in Chiang Mai Tuesday morning. A red-eye flight from Delhi, only three and a half hours, no time to sleep – watching videos all night. Arrive in Bangkok at 5.30 am, a huge commercial project, the bright lights and glitz of 24/7 enhanced shopping experience. Passengers from all parts of the world gather at the domestic terminal lounge — we all wear a yellow transit sticker on the lapel — everybody having spent the night in an aircraft, bleary-eyed and hypnotised by inflight videos.

Then dispersed on different domestic flights North, South, East, West, and I arrive in Chiang Mai at 9.15am, a bit bewildered in the daylight of the arrival hall. Waiting for my bag… waiting, and waiting, but it doesn’t come. All the other bags have gone and now there’s just the belt itself moving round. Where’s my bag? My small volume of clothes folded flat, papers, books, computer cables zipped up tight, X-rayed and pushed into its space in the aircraft baggage. WHERE is it? My bag is ‘me’ an assembled ID, a costumed and shoed, hair-combed identikit. This is who ‘I’ am!

Man in uniform comes along, competent, in-charge attitude; looks at me over his glasses and asks to see my luggage tag number. He takes it to his desk, studies his document for a moment and makes a call (I’m watching him at his desk), comes back and informs me my bag was not loaded on the plane and it’s still in transfer at Bangkok… pause, he looks me in the eye, assessing my capacity for patience. Please write your address here and we will deliver it later today. His demeanour tells me he knows about this problem; he also knows how to handle worn-out passengers living in a video world. There’s an empathy and ease about his movements. Maybe he used to be a monk, a Maha Thera, all men in Thailand become monks for a short time. Some for a long time.

Meanwhile, I’m standing there like a satellite dish antenna pointed at the sky, receiving the signal, interpreting data – how should I respond to this devastating news? Make a huge scene? No, let’s not do that, long inhalation of in-breath, relaxed release of the out-breath. Man in uniform still waiting for a reply… there’s  something quiet and easy about him. Just looking at me… calm eyes, one eyebrow lifted slightly, as if to say, is that going to be okay with you sir? Inner well-being, and there’s a feeling that, yes, it could be okay. Even if I did get upset, it still means my bag is not here, and having to wait for it anyway.

He walks me over to his desk and holds the form in the centre of my vision, finger pointing at a space where I’m supposed to sign my name. Is this the no-responsibility waiver? Am I signing away all my rights? Everything written in Thai, do I have to get my dictionary out? Oh no, it’s in the bag. Sign it, sign it! Thank you very much, bye-bye, nice man. Walk away to the taxi area with no bag, no trolley, hands free, hands in pockets, hands swinging by my side as I walk. Get to the apartment, shower and dress up in a bizarre arrangement of light cotton beach-wear. Fall asleep on the sofa for two hours, then the doorbell goes ping-pong, it’s my bag delivered and rolling in on its wheels, just like the man said.

‘… have loving-kindness for your dislike of the way it is, so you are not even criticizing yourself for being critical… Even if you are sitting here hating yourself, thinking of yourself as selfish and critical and not a very nice person, you can have metta for that; you can have loving-kindness for the critical mind.” [Ajahn Sumedho, ‘ Liberating Emotions‘]

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responsibility & mindfulness

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IMG_0993POSTCARD#67: Phuket: Hotel room on the third floor, level with the treetops, slide open the patio window and step out on the balcony. Birdsong in the early-dawn light. I sit in one of the outdoor chairs, settle down, and focus on the in-breath/out-breath. Check that there’s a balance in the body, symmetrical position of limbs, feet flat, back straight… and a curious peace in the air; an atmosphere that’s suddenly different from the North – the kind of thing you notice when you come by air, are dropped on the ground and have to figure out a whole set of new feelings, like where am I now and the quality of the air; all kinds of new things. Five minutes of watching the breath with mindfulness, the sun rises and a great flood of things to think about swells up. I’m washed away by it for a while; thought sequences and memories become apparent when they reach the point of “being”. Before that they’re in the uncreated state – arbitrary, disassociated. Things that don’t exist at all, until I observe them. For the first time I’m thinking of the Observer Effect in quantum physics, the experiment showing that when one is observing the movement of electrons it changes their behavior. In Buddhist thought, the ‘observer’ is the self-construct that forms as a result of responses to sensory input via the Five Khandas. Received data is formed according to the mechanisms of the human sensory process – including cognition, a sense like all the others. I see the need, the responsibility of mindfulness…

Sit for a bit more, to see what’s happening and on-going indications that’ll eventually lead to my assessment of what could be the ‘reality’ for the day. There’s a clear recognition that I’ll be able to see ‘it’ in this way, so then there must be all kinds of very powerful entities present who choose to ‘be’ in this World in order to manipulate our perceived reality to fit with their own advantage – to have control. (Then after I’d written this part of the post, the news came that there’s a military coup in Thailand as from 16.30 May 22, 2014.

What now… ah well, there’ll be enforced peace and that’ll allow everyone to investigate the feeling – the unknowing energy of Thaksin followers who might think differently about the consequences of their action in other circumstances. And maybe those who have the influence will have the space they need to see what needs to be done to get it all to work – whatever. The heart of the Thai people is with the King who is at the end of his life… when it happens they will wear black and mourn for a year, un-fillable vacuum… that’s what this is about.)

Light becomes an irreversible fact, sky is unquestionably blue and there on the hill is the Big Buddha of Phuket, พระพุทธมิ่งมงคลเอกเนาคคีรี sitting up there at the highest place on the island. From where I am, it’s seen from the back, looking in the same direction I’m looking – I have to search in Google images to find a good one seen from the front (see below). Limited by what the human sensory mechanisms can do, this is the means at our disposal, you could say, and all the stumbling pitfalls that are part of it… sensory receptors are on the face, the front of the head, no rear-view mirror. All incoming data is received that way, from the front and the ears on the sides – mouth and nose on the front too. Strange how it’s like that, we miss everything that going on behind, unseen. There’s a tendency to turn around, always, to see what’s going on… anybody there? The limitations of being human, see it and switch off the ‘search’ function. Allow things to happen in the way they’re supposed to. It’s what the software does… a prayer would help.

“…not a single particle out “there” exists with real properties until it’s observed… reality is a process that involves consciousness [Robert Lanza]

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Top photo, Bodhi tree at the viewing area in the south of the island. Bottom photo, the Big Buddha of Phuket. Link to  source
Note: The Robert Lanza quote is from hipmonkey

getting attention

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traff.1POSTCARD#52: Delhi: There was a time when I wasn’t here – not born yet. The world just going on as it does without having anything to do with that person called ‘me’. I didn’t exist then. There’s an anonymity about this that’s quite liberating. Thinking about it here in the car, looking at the world going by, same world that was out there before I was born. I’m on the way to pick up my Thai visa for the Bangkok trip this weekend – heavy traffic and stuck behind a truck. I take a photo of it simply because of the way all the words and colours insist I look at it, shouting out at me, trying to get my attention. Is it this kind of attachment to ‘self’ that causes ego-rebirth? A whole truck is suddenly reborn in front of me, identity smeared over every part of it, saying: ‘I’ am here; this is ‘my’ place! It has to be allowed for; make space for it in all the honking, hooting/tooting and scenarios of outrage where everybody really wants to be somebody. Press your horn to announce your presence. Do it loudly, you think a lot of yourself.

Mindfulness of conflict, resentment and holding a grudge; loving-kindness, compassion, metta-karuna. I’m a long-term outsider, now more than 30 years of living in other people’s countries. It means there’s a distance between ‘me’ and how things are done. As far as possible, the ‘I’ is understated, indirect, a release of the tenacity of ‘grip’ on how I (personally) think things should be. Thus I discover these days, local people look at me and I become invisible. They can’t get me to fit into their social scale, eyes glaze over. I unexist for them. I understand it to be that easing off from holding on to identity, almost to the point of letting go completely – the Buddha’s teaching on anatta, no-self. Extraordinary in my case because the I-am-not-here thing happens twice, two cultural settings: India and Thailand. I’m invisible in both countries, just my name on the lists of foreign residents, photo attached; ‘me’ in dress shirt, formal expression, hair combed, ‘smile please!’ I take out the ID I carry with me here and look at the photo, stamped, authorized, signed, registered, watermarked. It’s my identity, but is it ‘me’?

I’m not convinced. Is it proof that I exist? …em, it’s a picture of a man who looks like me, having his picture taken. All I have by way of proof that I exist is the subjective experience of it and the present moment that is undeniably everywhere, in the unlikeliest of places. The ubiquitous presence of now, I keep bumping into it, oh… what’s this? The present moment seen in a cloud of unknowing. Or I’m thinking it’s something it isn’t. Or I accept the present moment is as it is, whether I am aware of it in its ‘as-it-is-ness’ or not.

Other times it’s seen as if standing at the bow of a small ship plunging through the waves, rising and falling, just on the point of leaving the past and surging into the future, but not there yet – never reaching that point. All the surrounding clutter and stuff of the mind is pushed away by the waves and the movement of the ship passing through. Long intervals between things… why this pause? How come there’s nothing to think about? What happens when the thinking thing stops – what happens after that? But the question just leads to more thinking. No answer, no question, stillness – a state of mind that’s free of all the tugs and pulls. Slow down, stop. Contemplate the body and mind; breathe in/breathe out, there is heartbeat, consciousness of the mystery: out there/in here…

‘…looking for the first time at homemade movies taken a few weeks before his birth. He saw a world that was practically unchanged—the same house, the same people—and then realized that he did not exist there at all and that nobody mourned his absence… But what particularly frightened him was the sight of a brand-new baby carriage standing there on the porch, with the smug, encroaching air of a coffin; even that was empty, as if, in the reverse course of events, his very bones had disintegrated.’ [The autobiography of Vladimir Nabokov: “Speak, Memory”, page 1]

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valentine palindrome: 14/02/2014

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IMG_0532bPOSTCARD#48: Bangkok Airport: Man wearing a bright red shirt leans backwards with hands behind his head just as I take the photo and it looks like a heart shape. Sitting in a coffee shop at Concourse B waiting for the 8.40 pm flight to New Delhi, decided to take the photo of the interesting curved shaped roof structure and didn’t see the heart-shape till I arrived in Delhi. A happy coincidence… and Valentines Day is special this year because of the palindromic sequence of date, month and year: 14/02/2014. Coming into Delhi from the airport, in the midst of pretty fierce traffic, I thought how nice to have this kind of numerical valentine and a day of love in a city that’s normally bristling with displays of proud male plumage and all things unloved. Then, looking through the image gallery in my camera phone, I discovered the photo – a gift, there in all the noisy traffic, a reminder to see beyond the tightly controlled mind state experienced in the driver’s seat.

The contemplation on loving-kindness, metta, begins with a focus on myself, my own well-being, and using that as a point of reference, I can extend it to others: “Just as I wish to be happy and free from suffering, so may all beings be happy and free from suffering!” Then I extend the thought of loving-kindness to a person for whom I have love and respect; and to those who are close to me. Extending then to those who are indifferent and to those disliked. It’s about the necessity of cultivating feelings of kind consideration to others; a conscious act of generosity rather than abiding with the unconscious default holding and keeping things to myself.

Arrived at the house, good to be back after two months away. Unpacked and found the Buddha’s Words on loving-kindness: the Karaniya Metta Sutta.

This is what should be done
By one who is skilled in goodness,
And who knows the path of peace:
Let them be able and upright,
Straightforward and gentle in speech,
Humble and not conceited,
Contented and easily satisfied,
Unburdened with duties and frugal in their ways.
Peaceful and calm and wise and skillful,
Not proud or demanding in nature.
Let them not do the slightest thing
That the wise would later reprove.
Wishing: In gladness and in safety,
May all beings be at ease.
 Whatever living beings there may be;
Whether they are weak or strong, omitting none,
The great or the mighty, medium, short or small,
The seen and the unseen,
Those living near and far away,
Those born and to-be-born
May all beings be at ease!
Let none deceive another,
Or despise any being in any state.
Let none through anger or ill-will
Wish harm upon another.
Even as a mother protects with her life
Her child, her only child,
So with a boundless heart
Should one cherish all living beings;
Radiating kindness over the entire world:
Spreading upwards to the skies,
And downwards to the depths;
Outwards and unbounded,
Freed from hatred and ill-will.
Whether standing or walking, seated or lying down
Free from drowsiness,
One should sustain this recollection.
This is said to be the sublime abiding.
By not holding to fixed views,
The pure-hearted one, having clarity of vision,
Being freed from all sense desires,
Is not born again into this world.

[Karaniya Metta Sutta: The Buddha’s Words on Loving-Kindness (Sn 1.8), translated from the Pali by The Amaravati Sangha]

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[See also the Buddhist teaching on The Four Sublime States: Contemplations on Love, metta, Compassion, karuna, Sympathetic Joy, mudita, and Equanimity, upekkha, by Nyanaponika Thera]