Tag Archives: mindfulness

an end to journey toward

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BKKairportPOSTCARD #205: DELHI CHIANG MAI FLIGHT: Hop, skip, jump and I’m back in Thailand; arrival on the Delhi flight; four hours flying time and transit at Bangkok for the Chiang Mai flight, one hour flying time. It’s only been two weeks since I was last here, the memory I have of it replaced by what it is now as if it were just a moment ago. I step into present time with a sweeping recognition of everything in the surroundings of the straight route taken in the direction of Transit Desk East – perspective effect down the very long passageway leading to a vanishing point. Boarding time for the Chiang Mai flight 30 mins from now. Speed walking along the same moving walkway I walked along only two weeks ago. Same high frequency sound piercing and resonating in my head. Same flashing red light: “end of the walkway”, as we change from one walkway to the next.

Same rush to get there; swept along in the urgency of the crowd and caught up in thinking it’s necessary to jump ahead of perceived obstructions in the mind; typically the group tours from Southern China, huddled together, first time away from home, the young and the old holding on to each other and blocking the passageway leading to the transit desk. I hear an official voice calling out in Chinese while I’m experiencing push-and-shove collisions with small rucksacks, elbows and full body contact with these small beings from a different planet; unfamiliar toothpaste smells.

I feel like I’m in someone else’s life; I’ve stepped out of my own life and into someone else’s, having to squeeze through the gaps in the crush, thrust, force, push and stretch-through long-arm reach to the desk – passport held in fingertips… and the Thai ground-staff member takes it just before the Chinese group leader pushes in front of me and slaps down two handfuls of passports. How lucky is that! The ground-staff member standing on a box above eye level facing the crowd, dressed in Chinese costume and is speaking Chinese at extraordinary high volume, splitting my headache in pieces. Necessary, to help the surging crowd, who are having difficulty filling in their landing form, and she’s holding up a sample; the blue form, and pointing to it so the people in the back can see and know what to look for.

She stops and looks down at me, the odd man out, sits down, opens my passport, sees the landing form is complete and then a very strange thing happens: elbows on the table, she lowers her head and starts massaging her long ear lobes between the thumb and forefinger of each hand. I simply don’t recognize this gesture; the first time I’ve ever seen it. Then I know what it is; I see the tiny hole puncture in one stretched out earlobe as the finger/thumb combination wriggles the soft worm-like ear appendage flesh piece around and a small grimace as she looks at me with one eye, asking to confirm my name, gives me the in-transit passenger C.I.Q status sticker. Below on the desk before her are the heavy Chinese earrings that go with the costume.

I’m through and into the single lane then the two yellow footprints on the floor where I have to stand and look at the camera, click. Passport pages turning then thump and just in time, Chiang Mai flight boarding now. I get through to the head of the queue and show my 4 years out-of-date gold card which still works. I don’t want to ask them about validity… back into a flying machine, find my seat and deep breathing exercise to slow down the fast forward momentum of the mind playing out the stories, and fading away.

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It’s good to have an end to journey toward;
but it’s the journey that matters, in the end.
[Ursula K. Le Guin]

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knowing knows knowing

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IMG_2910bPOSTCARD #204: DELHI: … like suddenly waking from a dream, an unfinished story and something just happened – so fast that everything is out of sync, skips a beat. It’s because I’ve been unknowingly holding this pain in my head that’s now breaking through and the holding is not as important as the getting away from it… this is not happening to me! With that recognition, suddenly there’s no ‘me’ to whom this pain is happening just the velocity of it, like a wind storm and I’m lying flat in the grass as it passes over.

Some time after that, having taken my meds and the pain is now walled off in a corner of the head, I’m sitting in a straight-backed chair, just to see how that feels. Breath enters the body like a wind gusting in, withdraws, comes back, blows through everything then it’s not there again. Focus shifts to a great emptiness opening up – opening and opening… I might easily believe this will never end, but moving along with it to see what the next thing is. The purpose of my life is the on-going experiential response to the impact of sensory contact – what else could it be about? Skin, muscle, flesh, and these mysterious organs held by ligaments bonded into a skeletal structure. It’s as if there’s an electrical charge in there, sparks flying out. I am the context for the outer content. The whole investigation is one that is open to following where the knowing of it leads, see where it’s going, 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 a great flood of things to think about pours in.

Thought sequences and memories become apparent when they reach the point of “being”… before that they’re in the uncreated state – arbitrary, disassociated. Things don’t exist at all, until I observe them. There’s 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 not the ‘self’ but the self-construct arising from responses to sensory input via the Five Khandas. Received data is formed according to the mechanisms of the human sensory process – including cognition, which is a sense like all the others, and the great dome of sky above. Mindfulness is a returning to that place where I see how things change through my engagement with them…

‘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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Note: excerpts from an earlier post titled: ‘it’. Photo: Buddha rupa on the my working desk and the view of the garden

darkness and light

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Library - 1POSTCARD #203: DELHI: I’m sitting on the meditation cushion in the darkness of a very long power cut. What else is there to do? The back-up system keeps one fan working at slow speed creaking around, then it goes out too and we fall into a quietness of no fans at all, no air con. Look out the window and no street lights either. It’s fortunate there’s still some cool air here, upstairs in the bedroom as I get settled down on top of a short pillar of cushions that sink into the soft bed and the top is just the right position for me and my folded legs. So, here we are, just the two of us, corpus et mente. The agility of Mind senses body mass, tubed liquid of intestinal gurgling, body heat and wind of breath gusting around. Mind sweeps around the limbs up to the head in a high acrobatic somersault then down to the lowest point as if called to do so, and loosens leg muscles consciously. Ease and empty space creep in; the facility of it pervades everything, enters, becomes, or seems to be already here… it was always here.

It’s as if I’m part the way through something not experienced yet. Access at some middle point with nothing to indicate what has gone before, nor what it is now, only the empty space of what it could be… but not going there; held somehow in the neutrality of the pause before anything or everything arrives. There is only this surging through, it seems, an on-going movement, then a flicker of physical sensation somewhere sends Mind off to that location to be there with that small consciousness. Then another sensation and Mind seems to be able to travel around and through the cavern of body, front to back, no barriers, rushing through the invisibility of body structure, into the elbows, up to the base of the skull, everywhere.

Attention is drawn to a zizzle-zizzle sound and I’m fully aware of what it is; the ever-present, insistent mosquito, whizzing past my ear, then back again: zizzle-zizzle. I can picture it in its slight weight, tiny wings-blur of movement hovering for one brief second near to the ear… in proportion, a canyon swirl leading deep inside the brain with hot cloud of air all around that mossies like; that inner ear smell, blood capillaries and aspects of the vast organism it feeds on, the great mountain that is the human head. I twitch in response and it changes course: zeeet. It returns again and I do the head twitch, then it stops zzt… we know it has chosen an unseen piece of skin to land upon, unfelt, and getting the needle-sharp proboscis ready, positions it at the chosen point of entry: Em… now you may feel a very small prick here… please don’t move, it won’t hurt at all…. Mosquito arches her small abdomen (yes only females do this); the treasured insertion tool pierces the skin and plunges down deeper and deeper searching for a blood vessel further into the redness…

I try generosity; okay, go ahead! Giving it away free like this, letting go of the intensity, but it’s not working. Fall sideways off the cushion, defeated by a mosquito. All the other cushions that were underneath me spring up immediately and I’m flat on the bed surrounded by cushions; vigorous face and body slapping, fingers ruffle through hair on head for a moment then it seems it’s gone away.

Eyes closed and there’s that wonderful light coming in at the edge of vision that I haven’t seen for a long time – a kind of unreal ‘heavenly’ warm creamy white moonlight light. Open my eyes again… where’s it coming from… any light on in here? Nope total black out conditions. Close my eyes again and lying flat, waiting… in a moment it returns. Not seen, indirect, it illuminates the space as if it were just about to appear. So it’s okay to be here lying on the bed, coping better in this position with the mossies circulating around breath exhale, and the mystery of the light that has returned, light in the darkness – darkness and light.

‘What’s happening now is the position that I’ve always wanted to be in, I was just trying to get here.’ [Prince, 2014]

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photo above: wave on the beach at Hua Hin collecting shells with M

time-lapse

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IMG_1005 (1)POSTCARD #202: CHIANG MAI/DELHI: It looks like this tuk-tuk is moving but it’s not. Shadows of overhead cables create the effect. It feels like this present moment is just one screenshot taken in the making of a video about my whole life… well, I suppose it is, but if I hold everything on the pause button and examine my surroundings in detail, I find they’re not held in the moment I’m in. I’m distracted by two large birds zooming past my window, one bird chasing the other. If the whole thing was tracked by time-lapse photography, the trees could be seen growing up, extending their branches, leaves, closer to my window and blocking the daylight. The flight of birds would be like bees buzzing around in a cloud, and my movements in the apartment, a flash of shadowy comings and goings. Then stillness for the times I’m not there, only the sunrise and sunset light illuminating and darkening the empty living space.

The mind was in this time-lapse mode and I allowed a whole day to pack and tidy up the apartment. More than enough time, it was a night flight, so I’m moving in slo-mo action and at the same time watching a video posted by a Buddhist blogger friend. The packing was uncomplicated because it was all clothes for laundry – my washing machine stopped working the other day and the repairman will come after I leave (somebody will take care of it). So packing your bag is easy if it’s all stuff headed for the washing machine. Mostly it’s just getting it all in, squeezed into all the corners and close the bag with one all-round zip-zip-zip. Carrying 20 kilos of laundry across international borders and through X-ray machines and the officer stops me at the Nothing To Declare exit: ‘may I see inside your bag sir?’ “Carrying clothes for laundry into the country, are we then sir? [Aha, a likely story…]”

That didn’t take place, just a story inside my head with different versions of the same thing played out again and again. I got to the house, said hello to everyone and excuse me for a moment, into the laundry area and put the entire contents of my bag into the washing machine in one swift unpacking movement. Add detergent, select the program button, and close the door click! That’s it, done. The whole point of the journey was to get to the washing machine, you could say.

But, before that happened, M and her mom turned up to say good-bye. They brought with them a friend who is a masseuse, so I’m saying how about this pain in my head and neck? (PHN) and in seconds she had me face down on the bed, embarked on a full body massage, she’s on my back, twanging ligaments and tendons like guitar strings. I was in a daze, just enough time to shower and put on the only remaining set of wearable clothes, into a tuk-tuk for the airport – and there was no pain as such, just an easing because the ligaments and tendons’ twanging had stopped.

All the way through this, there were pictures in my mind of getting to the destination but having to correct these images because what I see is the old house, not the present house. I’ve spent more time since last November away from the place than living there. So I have to consciously delete these old remembered places and try to bring the present house to mind. Strange how you have to think things back to how they are right now rather than how they used to be. But the actual destination doesn’t show on the mind’s screen, hasn’t been updated yet… and sleep sweeps me away. Hardly noticed the arrival at 2.30 am, time brought forward by one hour and a half. I’m shoveled into the car by circumstances prevailing, and everything pushing me along in that direction. I get to the house, into the laundry area and put the entire contents of my bag into the washing machine in one swift unpacking movement. Add detergent, select the program button, and close the door click! And there’s this déjà vu thing about it.

“The timeless in you is aware of life’s timelessness. And knows that yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream.” [Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet]

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songkran สงกรานต์, संक्रांति

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songkran2016POSTCARD #201: CHIANG MAI: Impossible to not notice Songkran here, Thailand’s New Year festival, “sawat deepee mai”, Songkran begins today, 13 April 2016, in the Buddhist/ Hindu solar calendar. It’s also New Years day in many calendars of South and South East Asia. Songkran is the water festival, the act of pouring water is a blessing and good wishes. Before the festival begins, everything old is got rid of or it will bring the owner bad luck. Time to let go of bad stuff, ‘should auld acquaintance be forgot for the sake of auld lang syne.’ Wash away misfortunes in the past year, and welcome in the new year and a fresh start.

Thai people usually try to go back home and see their parents or their old relatives at Songkran. A tradition of bathing elders and asking for their blessing is part of the festival. Now I’m seen as a harmless old guy so I don’t get water thrown at me; a very small amount of blessed water is gently poured on my shoulder, or I sometimes get to sprinkle jasmine flower soaked water on the youngers who kneel and pray for fortunate circumstances in the coming year. All Thais go to temple in the morning and make merit by either giving alms to the monks or releasing birds, fishes or turtles from captivity – good deeds and the karma of it all.

But it’s mostly about water and the release from hot summer days. For young Thais and foreign tourists visiting here it’s a joyful water-throwing free-for-all. The streets are running with water to the extent that the Chiang Mai Government this year have started a small campaign to persuade the public it’s necessary to save on water. But not taken too seriously.

It’s also a time when people get reckless, accidents on the road the Bangkok Post today reports that so far, police arrested 20,094 people for drink-driving and 549 vehicles were impounded at checkpoints from 9 – 12 April. Owners of the impounded vehicles, 439 motorcycles and 110 cars, will be allowed to pick up their vehicles at police stations after April 17 when Songkran ends.

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the two-hundredth

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watpohguardian-e1459584335688bPOSTCARD #199: CHIANG MAI, THAILAND: the two hundredth postcard leaves this keyboard with a question I’m hoping will find an answer. There’s more of a familiarity with the characteristics of my perpetual headache, but the months slip by and I’m postponing the plan I had to come to terms with the dependency on the medicine I need to numb the pain. Future time slides into present time, tomorrow becomes today, and everything I was doing a moment ago has disappeared into the past again – the enhancement created by the meds masks many things. No sooner has it been seen than it’s gone. On the rebound, senses are alert, listening, feeling, searching… how can this be? But I’m caught in the conundrum of not being able to see it’s the searching for the way out that maintains the state of being lost.

After the illness came to stay (September 2015), it took a while to focus on the functioning of Mind as I’d previously known it; as the cognitive sense, the sixth sense that knows the other five senses and knows itself as the ‘self’ until attachment to that self aspect is seen through. Everything from there onwards is understood in a different way. There’s the seeing of events without the story and it all can be deconstructed carefully – indeed nowadays, there’s a fascination with this investigation, somehow believing that by taking things to pieces I’ll be able to see where the problem of dependency lies. But the investigation goes deeper and deeper, Mind changes its focus, and I discover I’m not able to find what it was I was looking for because I’ve simply forgotten the train of thought that brought me here. An uncomfortable place of attachment to something but no idea what it is. It doesn’t seem worthwhile to try to return to how things were before I started this, even if I could remember how it all fits together, which I can’t. Besides, things being as they are, putting it back together is impossible because everything has changed.

The confusion of mind like a jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing that can only be put together in chunks and not ever completed, means there’s always this dissatisfaction and returning to it again and again; this coming-back to look for the beginning of it… then, as if to remind me, and before I am properly aware of it, the parts come together as a felt pain. A thought now appears in a small window and the recognition of it as pain unfolds with ‘me’ suddenly playing the role of the person to whom this is happening – this is a story about ‘me’ and I’ve learned to take the dosage as soon as possible, and I leave the story and the window closes.

In the vast ease that follows I recognize an important piece of the puzzle; selected attention affects perception. What I think is the solution has been displaced by my attachment to searching for it. So, it just looks like it’s complete because time has moved on in the duration of thought arising, and everything now has the quality of being seen in hindsight.

In the peace and quiet ease of those moments when there is no driving urge to take the meds to correct this perceived pain, it’s possible to see that my attention to it is both the problem and the solution; trying to get what I want or to get rid of what I don’t want, but unknowingly caught in attachment to it. The desired state I’m seeking already belongs to ‘me’. Everything I have, everything I want, all of this is ‘mine.’ Even the pain, that which I consider to be the thing I hate the most, is also ‘mine’. What to do? How to learn the skill of detachment in these circumstances?

How wide are the horizons of the spinning earth! The moonlight leads the tides and the sun’s light will not be confined within the net of heaven. But in the end all things return to the One. The deaf and the dumb, the crippled and deformed are all restored to One’s perfection. [Hsu Yun]

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Photo: detail of a Wat Poh Guardian taken by P Henderson. Note: special thanks to Ellen Stockdale Wolfe who kindly sent me the link to the video below of Mooji’s remarks about pain. Go to 25.50 to bypass a lengthy introduction

http://mooji.tv/freemedia/he-sees-only-the-infinite-sky-of-your-being/

the elusive moment

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IMG_3672POSTCARD #198: THAILAND: In only a few days we’ve been to Bangkok, Hua Hin, and Chiang Mai , where I am now, alone with my headache that’s always here requiring attention, so I can’t do much else. Looking through the photos taken by my Thai niece M that come to my computer through our shared network. Images of the beach that carried so much meaning at the time, seem commonplace now… sadly not interesting anymore. It’s the experience of the moment; that great rush to take a photo, to capture that elusive quality of the moment. Later we see it as a record of the event, and the actual subject matter we were attracted to is caught in too wide a lens, overwhelmed in a landscape of other things.

Reminds me of the time I had to meet the Air France flight, arriving Bangkok 06.15 hrs. I got there in time, but the flight was delayed by one hour so there was time to sit in the seats at the tour group end of Arrivals, near Gate 10 and have a cup of coffee. Gate 10 is a lonely place where diplomatic vehicles park and tour groups gather, bleary-eyed and sleepless, having just got off the plane from some distant part of the world. The people around me were speaking Russian and I could see from the Arrivals board it must be the flight from Novobirisk. I googled the name on my phone and found that Novobirisk is a large industrial city in Asian Russia.

So I start to watch these Russians who are caucasians, like Europeans, and look like they’ve probably never left the area around their home in a lifetime. Stepped out of a time warp. They gather around their Thai tour-guide and have their names ticked off the list. Half an hour is allowed to have a cup of coffee; children run around, go to the toilets most of them are getting ready to get on the coach. Those who arrived first are now busy taking photos with old fashioned digital cameras, intensely absorbing everything around them. Taking photos with arms around the tour guides and taking pictures of everything; roof structure, walls, illuminated adverts, airport signage. Photos of each other posing in front of vases of purple orchids, dressed up in their best summer frocks and smiling for the camera. It’s as if they’ve emerged from black and white, greying photos of the 1950s, remote from anything I know of and yet there’s a familiarity; they could be people I knew in my childhood in the North of Scotland.

There are so many photos being taken, it’s like a small press event; digital camera lights flashing like strobe lights in a disco. I’m dazzled by it, blinded for a moment and have to look at the floor to allow normal vision to recover. Look up again and they’re leaving, the whole place captured in pixels and taken away back to Novobirsk, at the end of the holiday, where all the views of it are reassembled to form one composite image of the waiting area at Gate 10. ‘… and here is Aleksandra and Nikolai at Bangkok airport don’t they look so bright and lively?’

The tour leader has everyone present and accounted for and shouted commands gathers them together. Off they go, cameras flashing and blue lights twinkling at everything, on through the wide passageways and happily shuffling along with their luggage and running children. The mass exodus of the group is dynamic, all following the leader in front who’s holding a coloured flag high in the air so they can see it, moving as one great lake of beings in the direction of the coaches somewhere in another part of the airport.

And it’s suddenly quiet here at Gate 10, all the seats are empty and I still have time to wait for the Air France flight. This high-ceilinged place looks different, light slowly coming up and suddenly it’s daylight same as it always is. People again start to assemble in the seating area again; trickling in like water fills a pool. I see from the arrivals board It’s a group from Beijing, same as last time but the conversations are in Chinese.

In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time. [Leonardo da Vinci]

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Parts of an original post titled 30 minutes: https://dhammafootsteps.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/2122/

voice-over

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IMG_3377POSTCARD #197: THAILAND: Arrived in Bangkok, then a small propeller plane to Hua Hin, 41 mins flight, ninety miles down the coast. Unaware of the Brussels bombings we walked on the beach, no people anywhere, where’d everybody go? Came upstairs to our room on 6th floor, switch on TV and there it was; the Brussels Bombings filling our hotel room from nearly ten thousand miles away. We were stunned by the coverage; BREAKING NEWS, coming to you live from CNN Center in Atlanta. CNN reaches the whole of the US, and as far West as Pacific Islands and Japan. Then the other way from Atlanta, all countries in South America broadcast in Spanish and Portuguese, East through Europe in all languages including Arabic and the whole continent of Africa. On through Asia to Australia who are so far down-under, the rest of the world is up-over to them. CNN facilitates this news and within minutes, the bombs in Brussels are exploding all over the world.

FullSizeRender (5)We wake up the next day and it’s the same thing, the assumption is that many people in the world haven’t heard the news yet. At breakfast there are developments that seemingly, we need to hear about, also in-depth analyses of what happened and why, with experts discussing it – showing the same footage with voice-over and the production beginning to take a particular form. But we can’t pay much attention to it, busy with getting ready for our walk along the beach. Understandable really, I think, being the only white guy here. Brown people over here and everywhere with black hair and dark eyes, who are not Americans but the majority of the world’s population, puzzled and a bit embarrassed by the CNN presentation. Inclined to ask what caused the extremists to do such a thing? Sorry but that’s the wrong question… CNN is broadcasting its opinion in all countries of the world, stepping into everyone’s lives and figuratively speaking blasting everyone with the aftermath of the bombings using the dismay, distress, and consternation as a vehicle to convey the consensus point of view.

My niece M who is 12, asks me ‘Why?” I have to provide a satisfactory answer, but the same ‘why?’ follows me and my explanation. Then the extended form: ‘but why?’ all the way through my reasoning as we get into the elevator and she stops asking only when we reach the bottom, running out and down to the sea. Our early morning walk along the sand, and again we are the only people there, leaving a trail of footprints and the only others are those of the birds, M running ahead stopping to take close-up photos with my phone and her ‘why?’ more concerned with why do the footprints look as if they’re embossed on the surface, relief sculptures, rather than hollowed in the sand, strange – once you see it that way it’s difficult to see it the other way.

M footprintsBack up to the hotel room and the show must go on. Intense music, bright red colors and talking heads appear. They seem to ask and answer questions but the dialogue has been scripted. Frightening scenes of devastation from an on-the-spot location in the danger zone while we are in a safe place at home, made to feel like voyeurs at the battle scene: ‘This is coming to you live’ yes but it’s an act, rehearsed, decided on by an editorial team  who take advice from those obscure unseen advisors making decisions, about how the facts should be portrayed.

The dialogue looks spontaneous, and informative (I’d like to be a fly on the wall of these studios and see how much of an act this really is), welcoming the invisible third party, that’s us, the part we play as passive listeners mesmerised by the act, struggling in a bewilderment of feelings, holding on to this induced attachment to TV that we’re kinda comfortable with anyway and only later realise that by passively acknowledging this version of events, we are committed to seeing it that way.

CNN is now established ‘in the danger zone’, with easy-to-understand explanations and we allow the hypnosis to deepen by passive acceptance of it entering our living rooms – George Orwell’s 1984 propaganda TV reassures the population it’s all being taken care of by those who know what to do, although the threat of it continues. We know there’s something happening, it’s as if it were orchestrated, quite obvious really, but somehow hidden. Curious why we allow it to be there, but we feel we’re already committed to the CNN point of view, and that rewarding, induced, comforting mind-state takes over as we fall into our places in front of TV.

IMG_2852The next day I go into Google and find it has a Wikipedia entry already. Still there’s the question: why are these Islamic extremists targeting us? Could it be that it’s the result of something we did to them? Sorry but there’s something wrong with that question. History is made by those who won the war.

I’d like to explain to M how this illusion is constructed but cannot. So I’ll just have to hope she’s has a good enough grasp of English soon so she can read this post sometime and understand it after I’m not around any more.

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Photos:  view from our hotel room at the top and the others are footprints made by a bird and M’s footprints as she studied the image on the screen that made it appear to be embossed on the surface.

of this faring on

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IMG_2061 (2)POSTCARD #196: DELHI: Skating along with our trolleys on the smooth floors of airport halls and passageways, all these people coming and going. That feeling of familiarity, that déjà vu… I become you, he, she or it, we, you, they. We’ve been away and on our way back, or we’ve gone away and gone is gone… surrender your documents to the immigration officer, passport examined for as long as it takes the facial recognition system to get a hit. Passport stamped thump and through to the other side. Take out computer, remove your watch, phone, belt, and shoes and stand up on the box for a full body search. Wow! By the time we’re done and getting dressed again I feel like I’m a member of the family.

The relief from officialdom, we’re through at last, and welcome to the duty-free shopping mall extravaganza. Gold, diamonds and good-looking people; Hollywood celebrities posing as themselves wearing a watch or a necklace that costs a small fortune. There’s that familiarity, I look closely, but can’t remember the name, Mark Wahlberg, Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio? Trying to remember who is who, like this, and thus the idea is beginning to rise to the surface that I could get that watch and be like them, posing as myself. The three-quarter turn, they smile at me, comfortable with themselves, don’t seem to suffer from that great yawning chasm of emptiness situated in the center of everything – they become all I want to see, in my seeing of them: confident, secure happy and yes, this is how it should be….

With just the right amount of energy required to wrench myself free, the polished steel of the purchasing trap snaps shut on itself, and the ricocheted impact propels the escapee forwards in the direction we all seem to be heading anyway. You can’t miss it, the massive head sculpture in the departures hall – dramatic indeed (see photo above). I’ve walked around it a few times looking for an information plate explaining what it’s a sculpture of – the Buddha or a monument to the exaltation of self? It looks feminine, maybe somebody reading this can tell me. No time, no time. Into the queue, on to the aircraft, fasten your seatbelts, and we’re catapulted up in the air for a 3-hour flight. The hydraulics of retracting landing gear is such a reassuring sound, and audible click as it locks into place. We’re part of the sky and clouds, just this is enough.

Incalculable is the beginning of this faring on. The earliest point is not revealed of the running on, faring on, of beings cloaked in ignorance, tied to craving [Saɱyutta-Nikāya, Nidāna-vaggo]

somewhere else

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IMG_2056POSTCARD #195: NEW DELHI: These easy days of gentle sunshine on the roof terrace coming to an end. The long shadow of departure is approaching again and I’m caught in the momentum of its passing, swept through airport halls, the layers and passageways of the travel network. Checked-in, identified, one self-contained unit flowing along in the great river of humanity 24/7 passing through these air-conditioned corridors within corridors connected end-to-end, telescoped into smaller passageways, and down into the low ceilinged capacity, enclosed space of an aircraft seat made to measure, reduced, restrained, tightness in the knees squeezed in. There’s a small video screen about 18 inches from my face, showing hundreds of movies. Fold-down tables upon which, small trays of food are placed, fit exactly, and inside they’re divided into even smaller dishes. Small cup, small spoon, absolutely tiny packets of salt and pepper and a toothpick…

In no time at all, the food trays are cleared away, watch videos for four hours flying time, sleep for a while, go to the bathroom, then we’re there – just beginning to feel comfortable and it’s time to go. Passengers squeeze and squidge along the aisles like one body of thick fluid bristling with hand-held luggage and jamming up the doorway. The space we’re in opens out and extends, becomes a passageway then a larger space, all of us holding a destination in mind. Eyes hardly ever meet, preoccupied with mobile devices or searching for signs. Turn left, then right, stand in the immigration queue, passport stamped thump. Out of there and I’m in a different country.

I’m going to Carolina in my mind, or is it just a continuation of the last journey? Home is an expanded concept, ‘many mansions’, memory of former lives. It has the feeling of an in-transit time; where we were after we left and before we arrived. It’s the ‘in-between’ time (when is it never the in-between’ time?) on the way to or coming back from somewhere else. There’s a Nagarjuna quote: ‘All things are impermanent, which means there is neither permanence nor impermanence…’ Change sometimes takes a very long time to happen. Usually though there’s enough time to rest, open up everything and lay out my things, then pack with fresh clothing and something new arrives; I’m swept away in the velocity of thought. These easy days of gentle sunshine on the roof terrace coming to an end…

“Just as it is known
That an image of one’s face is seen
Depending on a mirror
But does not really exist as a face,
So the conception of “I” exists
Dependent on mind and body,
But like the image of a face
The “I” does not at all exist as its own reality.”
[Nāgārjuna, c. 150 – 250 CE]

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