the unexpected thing

Posted on June 4, 2014 by tiramit

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

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

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

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

“Advaita (nonduality) does not mean “one” in the sense of eliminating all differences. The differences are present in the one in a mysterious way. They are not separated anymore, and yet they are there.” [Bede Griffiths (1997)]

————————-

Upper photo: the bird in Bangkok airport. Lower photo: the bird in my back yard in Delhi.

Note: Kuroko reference from: The Ptero Card

– G R A T I T U D E –

melodic intervals

Posted on May 29, 2014 by tiramit

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

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

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

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

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

————————-

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

Excerpts included here from an earlier post: castles made of sand

flying away

Posted on May 26, 2014 by tiramit

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

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

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

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

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

————————-

Upper image: Phuket island seen from the Southern viewpoint. Lower image: Chiang Mai seen from the air.

Notes from Ajahn Munindo’s talks included here.

– G R A T I T U D E –

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

‘it’

Posted on May 10, 2014 by tiramit

POSTCARD#65: Chiang Mai: The photo is from the garden of Wat Phra Singh, one of a dozen Buddhist temples in the old city – 700 years of accumulated virtue, focus, and wisdom, means the sense of well-being almost becomes a tangible thing. An improved English translation might be: ‘When there is no beginning there is no end.’ Words, in any language, don’t stretch that far. In Thai it’s expressed better: meua (when) mai mi (don’t have) kanreumton (beginning) kho mai tong (not necessary) kangbon (worry) tung kwam sin sut (the end). No end, no beginning, leave everything in the continuous form of the present moment – ‘it’ never started so it cannot stop – it cannot leave because it never came [Mooji]. No past, no future – only for the simplicity of linear time and getting things in the right order. ‘It’ is simply understood… things are as they are, the on-going investigation of what else is happening in the mind/body organism and the world containing it; all this continues, and finding my way through a lifetime of sensory input is enough – observing the smallest details of conscious awareness.

Saying there is a point of origin, creates a story in the mind: once upon a time… but I can’t be certain what happened before that – the chicken/egg puzzle. A story inside a story (inside a story), the deep memory of many lifetimes spent searching for ‘it’… and the reason for ‘it’. Now I discover if I ask what ‘it’ is, the question leads to the semantically empty ‘it’… as in: ‘it is raining.’ What’s raining? The sky, the clouds? ‘It’ is a ‘dummy’ word broadly signifying a general state of affairs, a name for something that’s not there. It’s what the software does. I can ask the question: what was it like before the story began? In the vast abundance of no ‘self’ anatta, looking at a thing without the identity of it being a thing and getting to be okay with not having to know what’s going on. Language creates identity, issues a photo ID, sign here please and over that it’s stamped with the seal of authority to verify the bearer of this document is who he/she says they are in the identity details created for it.

Then there are other days when the insight into How It Began just suddenly arrives… the entry point is in the context of the here-and-now. A fleeting moment of understanding in present circumstances; a light that illuminates everything. ‘It’ goes without saying… No beginning, no end in the absence of ‘it’.

In the Beginning, there is no beginning,
Only the Solitude of the One.
The One Being, Emptiness, the Void,
Space filled with Ether.
An eternal Hunger resides in the Silence of Space.
Hunger moves, growing, longing to be filled,
Tension becoming agitation, vibration.

Water forms in Ether,
Fire emerges within Water.
All is vibration — pulsating waveforms
born from Hunger in the Solitude, the One.

We are the One enjoying the appearance of Separation.

[V. Susan Ferguson, ‘Voices from the Four Cycles of Time’: Beginnings: Satya (source: hipmonkey)]

————————-

Lower photo: Jiab in the grounds of Wat Phra Singh

the fool

Posted on May 3, 2014 by tiramit

POSTCARD#64: Chiang Mai: I hear a sound outside, a voice, a single-syllable, shouted utterance… somebody’s name maybe. I pay no attention, all kinds of noises of building construction out there; clatter-crash-bang; screaming drills and power tools. Then I hear it again, go to the window and take a look over at the new building rising above the treetops. There’s a man up there on the highest level of the structure calling on somebody. I watch him for a while and take a photo. Enlarge the image as far as it’ll go; he looks like a desperado, an urban guerrilla fighter, but I think it’s the same guy who was wearing the red shirt in another post I wrote [light-headedness]. Something about the posture, he’s just standing there, face covered because of the fierce heat of the sun – incognito, a masked identity, a mystical storyteller, the Fool card in the tarot pack, all his worldly possessions in a bag on his shoulder and so busy with what he’s thinking about, doesn’t know he’s about to fall over. A small dog is barking at his heel – trying to get him to see the danger. Will he tumble to his death from this high place or will he prevail? The presence of the Fool is part of the fiction he creates, it insists on the performance. Please tell us a story – it has to be started before it begins… a story about a story, a song about a song?

Childlike and forever taking things as far as they’ll go, I am a make-believe being acting a part I believe to be ‘me’. Subject to astonishing karma because I’m holding on and mortgaged to the point beyond which mortgages really cannot reach, living on air, out on a limb… what I do is often done under duress: WORK, a sense of urgency, stress and getting kids to/from school with traffic congestion, food buying and one problem after another means I seek gratification in purchasing things: clutter and stuff/stutter and cluff, and the-urge-to-get-rid-of-it-all. A new problem always seems to arrive to take the place of the problem that was there before it, and the endless lack of a solution is tacked on to that… and to the one that comes after that… and after that, until I realise it’s the searching for a solution that causes the problem to arise…

When was it not ever thus?… and all of a sudden I’m free of it, thinking of emptiness, nothingness (as opposed to somethingness) and we’re all of a oneness … everybody’s brother and son, I’m no different than anyone. It ain’t no use a-talking to me, it’s just the same as talking to you [I Shall Be Free – No. 10]. Play the guitar riff from Purple Haze, do the best MoonWalk ever, acting the part so well, the ‘truth’ is revealed completely. There is no difference between the ‘self’ construct and my part in the story – even so, the spectator wants to believe I am the character, not the actor just being myself and simultaneously not myself. The ‘act’ of being alive. It’s just there, a total act, ‘theatre’, illusion, maya and we’re immersed in the story of it all…

‘Our lives suffer from a lack of meaning that disguises itself as consumerism and a host of other addictions. Having lost our spiritual grounding […] we experience our groundlessness as an unbearable lightness of being. The tragic dialectic between security and freedom reasserts itself: having attained some measure of self-determination and confronted the lack at its core, we now crave the grounding that would connect our own aspirations with something greater than ourselves.’ [David Loy, A Buddhist History of the West – source: mindfulbalance.org]

————————-

Post includes parts of an earlier post: Acting the Part

now here & nowhere

Posted on April 25, 2014 by tiramit

POSTCARD#63: Chiang Mai: Going home in a tuk-tuk with M sitting beside me, small body-mass pressed against my side. The urgency of speed, kinda scary, canvas roof, no walls and immense sound of 2-stroke engine fills our space. Impossible to hear what she’s saying, M indicates that she wants to borrow my phone. I pull it out of my pocket, hesitate. Is it okay to play with a slippery glass-like instrument like this in a speeding tuk-tuk? It might fly away into the great-rushing-past-outside world, anicca, necessity of mindfulness – she should hold it tight. Small face looks at me silently… don’t make a thing out of this Toong-Ting. I press it into her small hands. Hot, prehensile fingers grab, grasp and clasp the phone. Go to settings, clear away unwanted windows with the swipe of a tiny finger and launch multiplayer Minecraft.

So fast! I’m kinda surprised she’s managing to get Internet, 3G signal reaching us here in a tuk-tuk racing through the streets of Chiang Mai – or maybe we’re in it, like a fish is in an ocean of water. Everything out-there passing by in a blur, feels like a totally crazy speed, why all this rush? I can see over the driver’s shoulder, through his windscreen and it’s like travelling through a wormhole in space-time; the actual here-and-now – everything outside of this is in a different reality. Everything on the ‘in’ side of it locked down tight, my arm around the slight presence of M, taking up such a small amount of the space on the seat, legs sticking out, and Minecraft’s digitally created landscapes of mountains and seascapes appear in the little window of the phone in her hands. She’s now in player-hosted servers with visiting players from all countries in the world. How do you say this Toong-Ting? She spells out: G-A-V-I-N. I tell her it’s a boy’s name, ‘Gavin’, probably English (who’s this Gavin guy, I wonder). I see name labels moving around the landscapes, Japanese and Italian names; Spanish, German, Norwegian – players I assume are about the same age as M. I see boy’s names and girl’s names, all here at this very moment – and, where is ‘here’? Good question: now here and nowhere, depends on the context… spatial and temporal qualities. Space and time are not separate, I read in a post recently [See note 2, below]. This is (always) where we are at.

Looking down at the top of her head, hair combed from a parting in the middle, pulled out in two separate directions, woven into tight plaits on either side, and it’s as if she knows I’m looking at her: Remember this number Toong-Ting: 19122, she says. I consciously remember the number, repeating it to myself… In a moment she asks me what the number was. I tell her, 19122 and ask what it was for, by the way, but she doesn’t answer… having to have things explained to me by a 9 year-old girl who speaks English as a second language – must be a password or login name. Sad really, these days there’s not the dialogue there used to be, ‘I’ am not here, anatta, a suspended state, waiting for the next question. What’s this mean, Toong-Ting? M spells out: B-R-O-S and I tell her it’s a boy’s server, he’s American probably, he’s black and I think she knew the word ’bro’ already. Obviously interested in this and next thing she’s in with the BROS, their mountains and volcanic lava, burning fires.

Then there’s a little wail – she gets disconnected. It feels to me like a catastrophe, but for M it’s no big deal, she changes to a different player-hosted server with new players – or maybe some of them are they same ones who just got here from the same sites we were all in earlier. And while that’s loading, a quick glance at the blur of what’s out there rushing by us, then she starts to sing a song from the movie: Frozen: ‘Let it go, let it go….’ I join her in the song. We sing together, Tuk-tuk driver laughing with his eyes in the rear-view mirror….

‘Time is in the mind, space is in the mind. The law of cause and effect is also a way of thinking. In reality all is here and now and all is one. Multiplicity and diversity are in the mind only’. [Nisargadatta]

————————-

Notes: 1) The Nisargadatta quote above comes from a post I read recently but cannot find now. If you happen to know which one it is, please let me know – thank you! 2) Gratitude to: KM Huber for her post: No separation of Space and Time Here and the space-time observation. 3) Mr. Tawat the tuk-tuk driver usually waits at the same place at the end of my road every day. He has taken me on other journeys, you can see other pics of his tuk-tuk here and here and also below

‘face’

Posted on April 19, 2014 by tiramit

POSTCARD#62: Chiang Mai: Why am I awake? Lying here in the half darkness – can it be morning already? But it’s still night. There’s an illuminated hotel sign across the way that shines in my window all the time and it feels like dawn entering between the half-drawn curtains. I hear voices speaking English from the street below. The sound comes in through windows wide open. It must have been this that woke me. What’s the time? Wow, 2.30 am… is this some kind of emergency? Get up and walk over to the window, look out. I’m on the 3rd floor and see there’s a group of white guys down there, brightly lit from hotel signage. I hear bits of what they’re saying… sounds intense. There’s a feeling of urgency, everybody talking at the same time. Where did they come from so suddenly? Must have arrived in a tourist bus coming from somewhere, hotel staff carrying luggage inside. It takes a moment to see they’re mostly drunk, smoking their cigarettes because it’s not allowed inside. Talking over each other in a great haste of words, incomprehensible babble and too noisy for 2.30am.

I feel someone should be objecting to this noise, lean out the window: Hey, guys! You know what time it is… eh? But the hotel security man watching from the doorway doesn’t intervene. The night staff at the reception desk act like this is not happening – mindful of the discomfort but it’ll be over soon, cigarette-time doesn’t last long. The drunk guys meanwhile go on venting their spleen, or whatever, and don’t have any idea that it’s not cool to be losing your cool like this in Thailand, drunk and causing a scene in a public place. Not because it’s “bad” or against the rules – do it in private, no problem. In public it creates a kind of Thai embarrassment called ‘losing face’. The predicament of not knowing what to do…

It’s how the history of things developed in this part of the world, and the Buddha’s teachings. The art of the ordinary smile, leaving unnecessary stuff unsaid is a skill we Westerners never learned. We have the ego, the ‘self’ and the concept of ‘my’ rights… a different world. I’ve seen Thai people hold composure until the face goes white, pouring with sweat, emotions locked in ice-like conditions, and still nothing inappropriate is expressed. This is ‘saving face’, an extraordinary capacity to function without a show of anger. The political demonstrations in Bangkok are an example of ‘face’ with underlying sense of dread that the powers-that-be may be waiting to see how far the situation can be pushed before reaching the tipping-point, beyond which it becomes truly scary for everyone, a kind of insanity; ordinary people running straight into a hail of bullets [Link to: 1992 Black May] and the catastrophic events since 1973.

Maybe it’s the fear of it happening that holds things in a benign pleasantness with mutual-respect and the clear intention always to do the right thing in any kind of situation – or maybe they’re just nice people? And this is how it ends; the drunks finish their cigarette-smoking and stagger off indoors. I watch them from my place up here on the 3rd floor, level with the treetops. Scattered cigarette butts on the road down below that’ll be swept up by the morning. And after a while, it’s like they were never there. There’s quietness and a fragrance of small jasmine flowers that blossom in the night. I open the windows a bit wider, go back to bed and wait for morning.

‘The third Noble Truth is the truth of cessation. Not only do we let go of suffering and desire, we know when those things are not there. And this is a most important part of meditation practice, to really know when there is no suffering. Suffering ceases, and you are still alive, still aware, still breathing. It doesn’t mean that the world has ended, that everything has become blank; it means that the suffering has ceased. The suffering ends, and there is knowledge of the end of suffering.’ [Ajahn Sumedho, Suffering Ends]

————————-

Photo (Dreamstime): Anti-government demonstrator paints mask in the likeness of ex-PM Taksin

strange familiarity

Posted on April 5, 2014 by tiramit

POSTCARD#60: Chiang Mai: 05.00 hours and there’s a problem with the internet. I have the about:blank page, a blinding white screen illuminating everything in this dark room. Things unexpectedly quit, don’t reload and I’m stuck because I can’t connect, the flip-side of that happily engaged state. The created ‘self’ has it’s own momentum… help!-help! – how to undo this bewilderment? Step back, get the bigger picture, zoom in, zoom out. How’s it working? Not good. But there’s a small obstruction-free space in this scenario, thank goodness, I remember a sense of pleasant abiding that supports it all. A long time ago I was keeping house for a Buddhist monk who had health problems. It was a cottage in a field in the middle of the English countryside. Theravadin monks are not allowed to touch food unless it is offered, so I’d go into town, do the shopping, prepare and offer the food before noon. The monk would chant the Anumodana blessing, birds singing in the trees outside, and we’d eat. It was a nice time, we’d talk about the Dhamma, go for walks sometimes and a lot of time was spent reading… yes, reading happened often – partly because his computer was really old and the internet connection extremely slow.

Once a day he’d start up this big, heavy, old Dell laptop and check his emails. It could take an hour… slow is not the word – death-like in its slowness. He told me with some eagerness that it was possible to read a page and a half of his book in the time it took the computer to load an image. For me it was about letting go of ‘self’ and what’s left after that? Only the strange familiarity of objects, sequences of events, karma of reoccurrences, and expecting things to happen when they’re nowhere near ready. Maybe it was easier to go along with that in those days. We had no idea about speed, bandwidth or anything.

In the really early days of the World Wide Web, I remember staring into the blank screen, waiting for the page to load and this wasn’t a frustrating thing at all. It was understood that things took a long time, the duration was really part of the experience – it was miraculous when the page finally opened. It was like, wow! I am now in a library in Wisconsin or New Zealand or South Africa or wherever, I see I’m in some room on the top floor maybe with the sun coming in the window and a view of a landscape outside. I’d feel like I was actually there… and isn’t that amazing! So it seemed to me at that time, then in Bangkok, Thailand nearly 30 years ago.

And the familiarity of the old dial-up connection; that strange piercing sound like the noise of an old iron gate swinging open and closed. Somewhere in mid-swing the tone would change, there’d be this alternating two-tone sound – and this is how it was for us, in the cottage in the field, when the monk’s computer would stir into life, he’d place the book he was reading gently aside, look into the screen, like the whole thing unfolding in slow motion. Select an icon, click that and wait for another 2 minutes for the next page to load. No problem, he’d reach for his book, find the place… continue reading.

‘When we come to practice we don’t know what we don’t know. After a while, the ego mask starts to crack and we begin to know what we don’t know. With some diligent practice, we might have a break through and for a moment or so know what we know. And if we continue with this wondrous work, we might stumble back to not knowing what we don’t know.’ [Wild Fox Zen]

————————-

assumed identity

Posted on March 29, 2014 by tiramit

POSTCARD#58: Chiang Mai: Arrived in the early evening and out through the exit tunnel into the airport corridors. Turn the first corner and we’re looking back through a large window at our plane with passenger bridge attached. M says, in her 9-year old voice: take a photo of it… put in your blog Toong-Ting (she calls me that). There’ll be a time when M takes a direct editorial role in this blog… so I take the photo and here it is now. A large reptilian mouth sucking out the contents of a passenger aircraft that has a painted face, intensely happy smile, and it seems okay about what’s happening. M is silent for a moment as she considers the elasticity of this strange stretched metaphor. Then we continue along the corridors to get our bags from the luggage belt. I put everything on the trolley with M sitting on top, push the wheels through the glass doors, opening as we approach and we’re in Arrivals. Her mum is waiting for us, pleased to have M back.

Bags in the car and we’re off. Heavy traffic on the way into town and M, still silent, looking out at it all considering, maybe, how one thing can become another, tells me that cars have gender: boy-car and girl-car. It’s the look of the ‘face’ of the car – that kind of ‘grin’ created by the front bumper and radiator grille. She sees it as the face of a boy or a girl or, if she can’t decide which it is, it must be a katoey, effeminate gay male, third gender, or whatever – she giggles a bit, it’s okay in Thailand. I ask her to identify a boy-car for me, just to see if I can recognise its ‘maleness’ – although I’ve always thought of cars being male. She points at one: that’s a boy-car Toong-Ting (see left pic). I want to say… how d’you know that? But this kind of challenge to her reasoning might be too much, so I’m just going along with it. She asks if I can identify the gender: you tell me, Toong-Ting, it’s a boy-car or girl-car, okay? I have a feeling I’m going to get this wrong… let’s see, there’s one that’s got really male characteristics, I point to it and say that one is a boy-car. No, Toong-Ting it’s a girl-car… looking at me like, how come you can’t see something as obvious as that, hmm?

M spends a lot of time on the road, going to and from her school, a long way from her house. I think she probably knows the brands of all kinds of cars now, maybe not the names, just a familiarity with their appearance and long ago decided some were boy-cars, some were girl-cars, and those in-between were katoeys. As we’re going along I take a photo of the back of a car and show it to her so she can study it in detail: boy or girl? (see pic below) She says she can’t really tell looking at the back of it, can’t see its face, but thinks maybe it’s a girl-car, because she remembers that she decided at some earlier time, that particular make of car was a girl. It’s a case of remembering which is what (or what is which?) or what she had already decided it was when she first saw that make of car.

There’s intelligence in her playfulness, a reality in her personifications that challenges my usual insisting there is no ‘self’, the Buddha’s Teaching on anatta: ‘self’ is an illusion arising from the 5 Khandas. I feel I’m holding on to something I should let go of, with M going around happily applying the attributes of ‘self’ and gender to all kinds of things. She can create an identity and let it go, because it’s one among many. She can escape the entanglements of ‘self’ because she plays with a multitude of ‘selves’, like waves in the ocean and an ocean in all the oceans of the world. Everything in the universe is Self. The ‘self’ I believe to be ‘me’ is an assumed identity – there is no ‘self’, everything I see is ‘me’.

‘Brahman is full of all perfections. And to say that Brahman has some purpose in creating the world will mean that it wants to attain through the process of creation something which it has not. And that is impossible. Hence, there can be no purpose of Brahman in creating the world. The world is a mere spontaneous creation of Brahman. It is a Lila, or sport, of Brahman. It is created out of Bliss, by Bliss and for Bliss. Lila indicates a spontaneous sportive activity of Brahman as distinguished from a self-conscious volitional effort. The concept of Lila signifies freedom as distinguished from necessity.’ [Ram Shanker Misra, The Integral Advaitism of Sri Aurobindo]

————————-