over the horizon

Posted on July 29, 2014 by tiramit

‘Through our eyes, the Universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the Universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the Universe becomes conscious of itself.’ [Alan Watts]

POSTCARD #83: London – Delhi flight: Clouds cover the landscape, with openings here and there where I can see the ground below. England is a patchwork quilt of very small fenced enclosures, little houses built with brick and stone that last for hundreds of years. Concrete bulwarks along the coastline, the idea of the sea engulfing the land is psychological. A united Kingdom huddled together on land space so small it’s almost not there at all. Travel across from East to West and in a few hours you come to the sea again. Geographical aloneness, an island mentality, the idea of ‘self’, marooned, I am contained, separate from everything, surrounded by water, the world is out ‘there’. Not much room, just enough space for everything, a smallness, memories are close by and everything is near at hand. The buildings and the land were all here before I was born and will be here after I’m gone. Children learn about the everlasting ‘soul’ living in an objective world; belief in a ‘self’ yet… seeing only the lack of it, a lifetime spent looking for an answer to this puzzle – it must be… over the horizon somewhere.

Somewhere far away from not ‘being’ but being busy doing things. Somewhere distant from the default settings the world of money and power depends on. The system hijacked the Jesus Teachings and now there’s no place in society for a contemplative spiritual life. Nothing to encourage children to look beyond sensory gratification and see through perception because it works better to have an unknowing population addicted to television and consumer goods. Living with an intensity fueled by greed, hatred and delusion, instead of generosity, loving-kindness and insight. The worship of self rather than selflessness.

In a discussion with one of the monks at Aruna Ratanagiri Monastery in UK the question came up, what does the word ‘contemplation’ actually mean? Contemplating contemplation… the state of mind where everything is seen as an awareness of present experience, circumstances which can’t be explained in any terms other than what they are. Thinking stops and the mind opens up to experience as it is – not as it’s verbalised. Sometimes language just gets in the way. Like waking up after a good night’s sleep and there’s the solution to the puzzle I was thinking about before I went to sleep. No words, no memory, no markers in the mind for thought to attach to and somehow everything falls into place.

We call it a grain of sand,
but it calls itself neither grain nor sand.
It does just fine, without a name,
whether general, particular,
permanent, passing,
incorrect, or apt.

The window has a wonderful view of a lake,
but the view doesn’t view itself.
It exists in this world
colorless, shapeless,
soundless, odorless, and painless.

The lake’s floor exists floorlessly,
and its shore exists shorelessly.
The water feels itself neither wet nor dry
and its waves to themselves are neither singular nor plural.
They splash deaf to their own noise
on pebbles neither large nor small.

And all this beneath a sky by nature skyless
in which the sun sets without setting at all
and hides without hiding behind an unminding cloud.
The wind ruffles it, its only reason being
that it blows. [Wislawa Szymborska]

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The header image source: Aruna Ratanagiri Monastery.

Poem source: superaalifragilistic, View With A Grain Of Sand.

The Alan Watts quote source: Zen Flash, Through our eyes the Universe is perceiving itself

– G R A T I T U D E –

the thingness of things

Posted on July 19, 2014 by tiramit

POSTCARD #81: Newcastle: Five days in a Buddhist monastery in Northumberland, sitting meditation in the early morning and last thing at night. The photo above was taken at 5.15am. I wanted a picture of the sunrise and didn’t see the sheep in their places next to the wall – slightly startled by a human being leaning over into their enclosure and the click sound of the phone camera. They wait to see if he comes back, forget about it and only the fragrant grass remains… early on a summer’s morning.

After that I’m in the Dhamma Hall, sunlight shining through the roof windows on the Buddha statue, benign and welcoming. Monks with shaven heads sitting on the floor, faded tangerine-brown robes, flowers, incense and candles. Focused on the silence, watching the inbreath/outbreath, seeing the thinking process coming and going. Fragments of a thought pieced together from associated thoughts, memories of a past time brought into present time, together with things thought about in future time. Pause for a moment and everything stops… just the circumstance itself. It takes some effort to get it started again. Maybe there is only one moment – only one, all the time.

Everybody sitting completely still, listening to this shared silence. Suddenly there’s the faint sound of somebody outside doing something. He whistles part of a tune… it’s not noisy, quite pleasant. Nobody moves, of course, nobody turns around to look. We all continue to sit, the quietness interrupted by a small clunk noise… then he whistles his small tune again. It’s the farmer next-door, busy with things. A wooden door goes bonk… something is dropped on the ground, and there’s an interval of quietness. Then a rustling noise, and the whistled tune re-enters, invading the space. It’s an amazing sound, a kind of warbling around a melody. It trills like a bird – how could anyone whistle so well! It’s a chorus from an old song I can’t quite remember. Then it’s silent again… waiting for the whistle to come back, but it doesn’t come back and I realise he’s gone.

Consciousness seems to move from one moment to the next and there’s only just enough time to decide what this is before it changes into something else. In the interval that the mind is engaged in ‘thinking it’, everything moves on and I can never seem to catch up – can never find the right words to express it… wordless and indefinable. Language is an overlay placed on reality, gives everything an identity, tells the story, creates a fiction I get lost in. Nothing is what I think it is. The present moment feels like it’s an immediate event occurring ‘now’, but there’s also a feeling that maybe it’s not. Time is a measurement I apply – applied time. Maybe this is something that’s not happened yet… it happens later, gets reflected upon and what I think is ‘now’ is actually a fraction of a moment of hindsight situated in future time. How can I be sure things are what I think they are when I’m only always just feeling my way through something not experienced yet? Looking at what it’s not and everything on the other side of that, must be what it is. The absence of ignorance…

Moon unchanged,
Unchanged flowers.
I, however, am now
The thingness of things.
[Bunan]

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belief structures

Posted on July 14, 2014 by tiramit

POSTCARD#80: North-East Scotland: There are just so many stone circles here, it’s as if there was something mystical about this strange shoulder of land projecting into the North Sea (link). Massive volumes of stone weighing tons, how did they move them? It happened 4000 years ago, no technology, all kinds of theories. A simple answer may be that these huge chunks of granite were already scattered around in the landscape, the result of a major geological event that occurred millennia before. And the stone circles were built there, in locations where there were stones and the right kind of alignment with the moon and stars. Creating the structures would have been a major community effort, ropes and rollers and manpower. A huge task, like building the tallest building in the world, but motivated by belief and accomplished through this compelling Truth, whatever it was that’s lost to us now. In the primitive mind, the mystery was developed into some kind of myth, volcanic beginnings and culminating in these strange structures – gateway to the universe. Even so, 4000 years later there’s something I can feel here, an energy, the mystery of it… how did these stones come to be here in one place, just lying around half buried in the earth.

Generations of these ancient folk looking at the moon and the heavens; experiential knowledge, wisdom not separated from the presence of the phenomenon. Everything carries meaning, words cannot describe it well enough, and it becomes a magical thing. I can picture them all standing up here, the ancient people, watching the sun and the moon and the stars. The location carries the feeling of being in the Northern Hemisphere, the top of the world – just knowing intuitively this is the North. Or maybe it’s to do with altitude… something like being at the top of a mountain looking at the view, and what you see out there has the sense of vastness. Basic common sense tells me there’s a huge drop beyond the horizon – that way is ‘down’. Then the ‘above’ – the heavens up there, over my head and all around.

The flat stone (the recumbent) was the measuring device, or the altar, the portal, and the flanking stones on either side form a kind of frame through which they were able to view the positions of the moon. Mystical stargazing, an experiential wisdom; they were able to contemplate their location in space standing just here. Every 18.6 years the lunar standstill, where the moon appears to be motionless, caused by the coincidence of planetary orbits. You can still see marks carved on the stones where the major standstill moon rises or sets. The mystery is still here. Nobody knows. The ancients’ understanding of why it should be like this is as relevant as any scientific explanation today.

“… knowledge which is completely one with the thing it knows, complete understanding, complete absorption into that knowledge.” [Unsourced quote – I copied this from a fellow blogger’s post without making a note of the source. Please let me know if you are reading this…]

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Photo: PeterH

the journey to get there (2)

Posted on July 10, 2014 by tiramit

POSTCARD#79: Aberdeen Scotland: Wandering through these streets and lanes looking for my childhood; searching for something that’ll tell me what it was like more than 50 years ago as I walked along the route to school in all kinds of weather. The present time as it was in the past, brought forward into the ‘now’. All the shops have gone, been demolished, rebuilt and everything has become something else. Only civic amenities and urban architecture remain, paving stones, cast iron lampposts, doorways and gates. An iron gate hinge embedded in stone but no gate – is it something I passed on my way to school? Do things like this survive at below-zero temperatures for 50 freezing winters? Not impossible, everything is made of granite here, indestructible. Following my footsteps as a child, along these same streets that were old even then. There’s an unusual shaped crack in a paving stone that looks like a tree, strange familiarity, a passing recognition – the kind of thing a child would notice, head down and leaning against the wind.

Is it the same wind now, after all these years, flowing like a river from its source to the sea estuary and every single part of it moving always in present time everywhere along its length? The scale of it is so immense, a whole lifetime can seem like a day, an hour, a moment – and did I glance down at this tree-like crack in the paving stone when I was a child and react in the same way I’m doing now, thinking… how strange, it looks like a tree! What is it that makes one thing seem to be something else? Is this the recollection of a physical feature, or a memory of the perception of it? Remembrance of things past, former lives… it feels like yesterday, the nearness of it. It feels like now – or somewhere on the journey to get there.

There’s also a feeling of far-awayness, the day before yesterday I was on a flight from Delhi, transit in London to Inverness. Jet lag and bewilderment, scanned by X-ray machines, identified, processed, held in aircraft cabin pressure for 10½ hours and transported 4000 miles to the Northern hemisphere. Then placed on the ground and having to quickly reassemble the parts of who I am in this new context. A visit to the tribal elders, then into Aberdeen to revisit these childhood days. Coastal winds, cloudy skies – and when the sun comes through, the heat is intense. Raincoat on, raincoat off again, I don’t really feel I’m connected with the pattern of things here after so long in the East, sun shines all the time and years go by but it’s just like one very long day. Thought processes are without substance, fade away, and if I don’t reach out for the next thought, there’s nothing there. There’s a memory of how it was when I was a child here in the North of Scotland, I’m holding that in mind but when I let go… it’s gone. The wind blows and a feeling comes back again that triggers a memory, then it’s carried away with the sound of seagulls and the smell of the sea…

‘… a sense of existing right now, a sense of life looking out your eyes, and life feeling through your senses into this experience, this space of the room, this place. It’s like we are a sense apparatus for raw life, raw consciousness, which feels through us as instruments with five or more senses. What is sensed registers in awareness — this knowingness of existence, this knowingness that is existence itself…’ [Mukti, adyashanti.org]

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the silence of objects

Posted on June 16, 2014 by tiramit

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

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

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

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

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Note: this post contains excerpts from an earlier post titled Spaciousness of Being.

Image: Francisco de Zurbarán, Bodegón or Still Life with Pottery Jars, 1636

Thanks to: Living Success 3D for the Lao Tzu quote, which appears in the post titled: The Greatest Gift to Give.

reality construct

Posted on June 12, 2014 by tiramit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Delhi’s daytime temperature was over 45 degrees C on Tuesday 10 June. Raisina Hill was witness to a mirage, an optical phenomenon caused by the bending of light as it passes from colder to warmer air.— Photo: Meeta Ahlawat, The Hindu Newspaper

Note: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin quote is taken from a lovely post titled: On Life, Death, & Original Sin in Julianne Victoria’s blog: Through the Peacock’s Eyes. Note: Reality Construct post includes excerpts from the channeled Darryl Lanka/Bashar talks.

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)]

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

Note: Kuroko reference from: The Ptero Card

– G R A T I T U D E –

melodic intervals

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]

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

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

flying away

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”]

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

Notes from Ajahn Munindo’s talks included here.

– 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]

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