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]

————————

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

loving-kindness for the unloved

Posted on September 22, 2014 by tiramit

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]

————————–

loving-kindness for the critical mind

Posted on September 19, 2014 by tiramit

POSTCARD#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‘]

————————-

responsibility & mindfulness

Posted on May 22, 2014 by tiramit

POSTCARD#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]

————————-

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

Posted on February 26, 2014 by tiramit

POSTCARD#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]

————————-

valentine palindrome: 14/02/2014

Posted on February 12, 2014 by tiramit

POSTCARD#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]

————————-

[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]

‘now’

Posted on February 8, 2014 by tiramit

POSTCARD#47: Bangkok: So profoundly stuck in this traffic jam it feels like time has stopped. It’s not today; it’s yesterday – same taxi, same traffic jam. I raise my head from the book I’m reading and look out at the world. No sense of having moved further on, the back ends of vehicles and bits of buildings. This is a continuation of the same day and the interval that happened in between, dinner, 8 hours sleep; it was a daydream. Look at my watch, same time, same place I was in yesterday. The same people (probably) all headed in the direction they go in every day. Look down at my book again, eyes scan the text… where was I? Remembering my place by association with events taking place around me. The sounds of the gear stick shifting through its worn engagings and the accelerator pedal, the brake, then the gear stick again… parts of the story seem related to parts of the journey. The words I’m reading are flickering around the interior of this cab. Parts of sentences and interesting phrases get wrapped around the objects in this small space.

It feels good in here, inside this metal shell that’s holding me cushioned in a womb-like environment, bent over the book in my lap and looking outside from time to time. The experience of the ‘now’ moment is the same ‘now’ moment everybody else is experiencing… a hesitant, preoccupied ‘now’, maybe, for many of us; teetering on the brink of wanting things to be different from what they are. The traffic is hard to believe. Skillful avoidance of the tendency to hold on to the thought it ‘shouldn’t be like this.’ Look around the interior of the taxi, devotional flowers hanging up front in the windscreen and up above I see the painted marks of a holy person’s blessing on the underside of the roof. Grey/blue seating, a public space, registration numbers for the driver and the vehicle. A photo of the driver with his name in English.

We don’t have a conversation. I say: rod tid… (bad traffic eh?). And he says: yeu! (too much). We’re comfortable with the silence after that. For him, it’s a pointless journey to nowhere in particular – no problem; it’s often like this. Pause for a moment and watch the in-breath, the out-breath; mindfulness. A moment’s reflection and meditative contemplation in a Bangkok taxi… this is how it is for him. After I get out, somebody else will get in and off to the next place. When he gets there it’s the same as the place he just left. Where are we now? There’s a huge map in his head. City traffic is like a river, it gets into all the corners and any place where there’s space for it, finding its own level and passing through the hundreds of miles of its landscapes as it makes its way to the sea.

Like a boat on the river going with the current, the ‘now’ feels like it’s not moving. Only when the trees on the riverbank are seen is there a sense of movement, of moving through time. The ‘now’ is experienced in this present time as it has been for millions of years. I can imagine a time in what I would call the ancient past, but a moment experienced then happened in present time; it was ‘now’. A prehistoric being may have been sitting on a rock or a branch, exactly where I’m sitting, inside this cab… looking around – just as I’m doing now – and the ‘now’ experienced then would have been no different from the ‘now’ experienced at this moment.

‘The river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth…in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere, and the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future… Nothing was, nothing will be, everything has reality and presence.’ [Hermann Hesse: ‘Siddhartha’, Chapter 9]

————————-

gridlock

Posted on January 31, 2014 by tiramit

POSTCARD#45: Bangkok: The traffic is incredible – beyond credible, the French word incroyable comes to mind. I get in the taxi, tell the driver where I want to go and he sets off in exactly the opposite direction to where I’m going. Disconcerting… it’s like when you ignore the GPS and its voice keeps on telling you to: ‘please take the next U-turn where possible’. But doing a ‘u-ey’ (yooee, Aussie slang for U-turn) is no good when the whole city is one huge U-turn, interconnected with diversions and u-turns within u-turns. Diversion signs posted everywhere; alternative routes because this is the ‘Bangkok Shutdown.’ All roads leading to Thai Government Ministries are blocked by demonstrators… a protest campaign to force the government out of office before the February 2nd elections. A bit scary but no signs of violence here… I feel secure enough. Strange how the Thai population is able to accommodate these dangerous protests and life goes on pretty much as usual.

The taxi is now going along at walking speed through a crowded area. It’s the lunch hour, people rush out from offices and factories to get something to eat from the local traders. But there’s hardly any room, cars are occupying every space and there’s nowhere for pedestrians to walk. They filter through the flow of slow moving vehicles like water trickles through the stones and boulders in a stream. I try to get a good photo of it but it doesn’t make visual sense, everything is too close, I’d like to try making a cut-paper collage and paste pieces of images of traffic in a kind of jigsaw effect. Maybe it’s something I’ll do after this – at the moment I’m in this collage. I’m part of it, looking through the windscreen, past the passenger head-rest in front and seeing in between a building and a pedestrian footbridge overhead. Out there, there’s a small patch of blue sky, maybe 30 miles away and I can see a passenger jet ascending into the air.

I don’t know to what extent the government is really affected by these demonstrations; it’s the ordinary people who have to take the immediate pressure. But I’m a foreigner here and there’s all kinds of stuff I don’t understand. One thing I don’t understand is how everyone is able to keep their cool, no sounds of car horns at all; drivers maintain an outward calm. The Thai othon (khanti patient endurance), a Buddhist control of anger through the cultivation of mind, based on compassion for all living beings. But how does that sit with the fact that authority figures may be taking advantage of this willingness to comply. This putting-up-with-it thing is allowing all the political skullduggery to go on unchecked…

Bangkok celebrates Chinese New Year from 31st January (10% of the Thai population are of Chinese descent); a 15-day holiday period is coming up when people take time off to go around the city and upcountry visiting family members. How will the traffic be, I wonder. How about the Thai capacity to stay calm in difficult circumstances? Will the political leaders go on pushing until it explodes?

There’s a distinct feeling that, for the time being, everyone is just waiting quietly to see what will happen

‘In daily life we experience suffering more often than pleasure. If we are patient, in the sense of taking suffering voluntarily upon ourselves, even if we are not capable of doing this physically, then we will not lose our capacity for judgment. We should remember that if a situation cannot be changed, there is no point in worrying about it. If it can be changed, then there is no need to worry about it either, we should simply go about changing it.’ [The Dalai Lama]

————————-

evenness of 2014

Posted on December 31, 2013 by tiramit

POSTCARD #38: A village near Hat Yai: Here in a house surrounded by trees above window height on the ground floor and in the daytime everything is seen in a translucent green light. It’s an old rubber plantation, with some palms and huge banana trees. Now it’s night and I’m pretty well seeing double having been staring at words all day. Struggling a bit to stay awake to see the coming of New Year – thinking the number 14 is somehow nicer than 13 and also the number 2014 has a pleasant evenness about it? But maybe I’ll go to sleep, it doesn’t seem right to be awake when all the small creatures in the forest are either asleep or being strangely nocturnal and kinda scary in their stealth. I feel a bit obvious here with all the lights on in the house.

Cannot see well, the spellchecker rejects all the Thai and Pali words and onomatopoeias and my spelling innovations; and when it doesn’t know a word I’ve been clicking the ‘Add’ option so much it’ll render the spellchecker obsolete eventually. It’s getting difficult too because small insects attracted by luminosity of screen are walking around in my vision seemingly dotting the letter ‘i’ and crossing the ‘t’ or making an ending to a word that isn’t there. Cannot understand how they get through the mosquito mesh on the windows. I notice that the larger insects stop flying around when you put the lights out because they bump into things, it takes them a few moments to stop where they are, anywhere’ll do and just immediately go to sleep. I’ll do that too, have to call it a day and shall set this Post so it’ll go out at midnight, and it’ll be the New Year then, Thai time: +7hrs GMT. So, all that remains is for me to say thank you friends and fellow bloggers for visiting me here in the year 2013, and best wishes for 2014. Metta, Loving Kindness, may your year be one of Mindfulness and Letting Go

– HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ONE AND ALL –

generosity is letting go

Posted on December 7, 2013 by tiramit

POSTCARD #31: In Buddhist countries, babies are taught when they are about six months old to put food into the monk’s alms-bowl. The whole family applauds as the sticky rice drops from that little hand into the monk’s bowl. The kid gets the idea early on: when stuff leaves your hand, you get this happy feeling. It feels good to give.

Everything the Buddhist monk receives is a gift, an offering; the monk is a mendicant, and lives entirely on the generosity of others: ‘Our bodies are fueled by the food that is offered to us. In fact, scientists say that all the cells of the body are replaced every seven years, so any (monk) who has been ordained for that long has a body that is completely donated. If it were not for the accumulated kindnesses, efforts, and good will of countless hundreds and thousands of people, this body would not be able to sustain itself. Kindness is the actual physical fabric of what we think of as ‘me.” [Ajahn Amaro, ‘Generosity in the Land of the Individualist’]

Generosity is cultivating an inward disposition to give, a glad willingness to share what we have with others. Give it away, we have more than enough. Ease the discomfort of being driven to fulfill that urge to ‘have’, to ‘possess’, a hunger created by always wanting more. All of it is gone when you’re generous. Brainstorm the word ‘generosity’ and you come up with loving-kindness, compassion, empathy, well-being, freedom. You find gratitude, grace, honour, motivation, encouragement. Generosity is everything. It’s nature is to share, recycle, circulate; it can only be given, never taken.

Generosity, is a mental, emotional letting go; releasing the tenacity of holding on to things; all that baggage we burden ourselves with is removed in one single act of generosity. Generosity means not holding to the self-concept, the separateness applied to things that are really ‘in context’. Seeing it all as process, ever-changing; a connectedness with the outer world. Generosity leads to wisdom – the truth is without bias. The cultivation of generosity directly debilitates greed and hate, and facilitates the kind of mind that allows for the eradication of delusion.

‘There was a seeker and a wise man. The wise man had a most incredible jewel and the seeker was absolutely amazed by the jewel. He asks the wise man if he would give him the jewel. And the wise man gives it to him. The seeker is very excited and afraid that the old wise man is going to change his mind, so he hastily says goodbye and goes off. A short while after that he comes back, approaches the wise man with great humility and respect, lays the jewel down in front of him on the ground and says he’d like to make a trade. He’d like to exchange this jewel. And the wise man asks him what he wants to exchange it for. The seeker says he would like to exchange the jewel for knowledge of how to gain the sort of mind that could give up a jewel like that without a second thought.’ [This story appears in Khanti – Patient Endurance]

————————-