Thursday 31 August 2006

Whack to the Side of the Soul

If it had been me maybe a couple of months ago (mmm, who knows, maybe longer ago), and I had somebody writing something to me about being contented and all that crap, I would probably have written "and then you wake up one morning and find that someone has pissed in your
cornflakes". It is the perfect response to reading all that stuff.

Except that, in my current state of mind, if I found that someone had pissed in my cornflakes, I would look at wonder at the piss in the cornflakes and see all this amazing stuff and marvel at the weirdness of some people and the novelty of cornflake piss - then tip it out and make myself some more - and still be contented with life as it is and was and could be.

That is the stupid thing about this feeling - it doesn't seem to matter what the external situation is (and most of any internal situation), there is always something about whatever is happening that is right and good and meet and that reinforces the feeling. Weird.

I was putting the bin out last night and it hit the gate and tipped over, spilling out a bunch of stuff onto the lawn and path - all whilst in the darkness and wind.
I just thought "wow" - how did all those tins and bottles from underneath the jammed in cardboard get to fall out.
I piled them all back in and continued with putting the bin out, then got the other one and marvelled at the moon in the sky and the windy night.

Things may be upsetting, but any feeling of upsettedness disappears so quickly, eaten away by the bacteria of goodness and happiness.
Even happens for more critical / important / bigger issues.
Just takes a little longer for the "bacteria" to do their work.

All in all, it strikes me that this whole thing is a little more than just being like a cow - contentedly chewing on one's cud in the field, waiting for the truck to pull up (although, in the longer longer view of life, that may be the most apt description of all).

This thing is like a "whack" to the side of the soul.
Everything has been shifted.
Everything is now seen and experienced from the "shift".
Nobody can see any difference, except everything that I do and happens to me is now different.

Wednesday 30 August 2006

Still Contentment

Am I still feeling contentment? Well, strangely, yes, in its own strange little manner.

It was a very strong feeling on the weekend and just before, and now sort of a little less, but I think a lot of that has to do with the normal ebb and flow of the stresses of working and family and just living - both in the society we live in (which can be manic at times - but let's have some perspective here - I am sure that people living 100 years ago, 200 years, 300 years ago, even 3,000 years ago or more, felt, at the time, and from one time to another, that they lived in a manic sort of society that put all sorts of pressures on them, one way or another (and that there may have been others that did not exactly feel this way either) and from the very fact that we are just living, ie being alive - just breathing and heart-beating is an ebb and flow pressurised stress-ful type of thing - why do you think our bodies and minds eventually wear out and we die?

So, there is all that stuff con-bobulating on the surface, with the awareness and continued strong feeling of solid contentment providing the foundation for ongoing existence.

So far, a pretty good feeling to have, and something to embed in one's psyche and physique, to have available as a resource at some future point when events conspire to topple one's contentment control.

Anyway, we will see how long it goes for and how we can continue in this new world.

Just now back from lunch.
Must write some more.
It is actually quite absurd, this feeling.
Things were dead-level before lunch at work - just work, nothing special (and, consequentially (I think) no real additional awareness of the feeling of contentment).
Yet I am at lunch and the feeling wells again - ever so gently.
And then I am walking back to work and I see an outdoor sculptor and feel how wonderful is it that there is something there, and I see an old van stop for someone to cross the road at a roundabout and I marvel (yes, marvel!) at the wonder of that old beat-up van stopping for someone to cross the road.

Thus the awareness comes that this feeling of contentment (as it has been so-called so far) is not just the bland, benign, "who really cares" feeling of a nothingness which is passed off with a pretty title, but rather, an active state of deeper awareness and appreciation of each single element of this gorgeous universe we live in, and being at-peace, at-one with all that makes this world, that creates this wonder.

It is an active state that is strong and on-going, of persistence and solidity, not one of strenuous hyper-activity that soon consumes all its reserves, depletes its energy and fades into the background and disappears, left with nausea, ennui, whatever!

That is the intriguing thing about this feeling - it is not one thing, nor another, but everything.
Which makes it interesting to see how long it maintains itself, as itself, of itself.

Tuesday 29 August 2006

Materialism

The most terrible thing about materialism, even more terrible than its proneness to violence, is its boredom, from which sex, alcohol, drugs, all devices for putting out the accusing light of reason and suppressing the unrealizable aspirations of love, offer a prospect of deliverance.
- Malcolm Muggeridge

Monday 28 August 2006

Contentment

I thought I would very quickly write and tell you about the strangest thing:
Over the last couple of weeks, and especially marked over the last week - I have been feeling a great feeling of contentment and "at peace-ness" with everything - being able to quietly smile at just totally everything, being able to just look at trees on the side of the road and be happy, very happy that they exist and that I am observing their existence, in the manner that they are presenting themselves to me, at this very moment, in this very way.
Most unlike the normal situation I have come to expect.
And I am thinking that this is some sort of lasting situation, that, for some strange reason, totally unknown and unforeseen, some cosmic corner has been turned and this will last for a long time.
Most likely mistaken, but even that internal certainty of lasting contentment, based on no facts and no evidence of any sort, is, in itself, another reason to feel contented and at peace.
Most interesting.

Friday 18 August 2006

Why I Write

"I do not write for a select minority, which means nothing to me, nor for that adulated platonic entity known as 'The Masses'. Both abstractions, so dear to the demagogue, I disbelieve in. I write for myself and for my friends, and I write to ease the passing of time."
— Jorge Luis Borges, Introduction to The Book of Sand

Monday 14 August 2006

The Theatre

“He knew that an enormous proportion of mankind feels, weirdly but indisputably, a stronger awe for the theatre than almost any other art or activity on earth. He knew that to get in on the inside, to be ‘behind scenes’ in the theatre, was to achieve a glamour completely out of proportion to that attached to almost any other profession. He knew that to give to the average person free seats for the theatre (while pretending that such a thing was easy because one was intimately connected with it) gratified such a person a dozen times more than to give him the money for the seats. When anxious to flatter, cajole, or bribe people in the past, he had often himself bought seats at a theatre and then given them away with the pretence that he had come by them through inside influence and that they were of no use to himself.”

- Patrick Hamilton, Mr. Stimpson and Mr. Gorse

Social Fabrications

"I gave way to delight, as mystics have for centuries when they peeked through the curtains and discovered that this world- so manifestly real was actually a tiny stage set constructed by the mind. We discover abruptly that everything we accept as reality is just social fabrications."
- Timothy Leary, 1966

Thursday 10 August 2006

Discrimination

I teach that the multitudinousness of objects have no reality in themselves but are only seen of the mind and, therefore, are of the nature of maya and a dream. ...It is true that in one sense they are seen and discriminated by the senses as individualized objects; but in another sense, because of the absence of any characteristic marks of self-nature, they are not seen but are only imagined. In one sense they are graspable, but in another sense, they are not graspable.

- Buddha

Monday 7 August 2006

As I watched

As I watched:

Thrones were set up
and the Ancient One took his throne.
His clothing was bright as snow,
and the hair on his head as white as wool;
his throne was flames of fire,
with wheels of burning fire.
A surging stream of fire
flowed out from where he sat;
Thousands upon thousands were ministering to him,
and myriads upon myriads attended him.
The court was convened and the books were opened.

As the visions during the night continued, I saw:

One like a Son of man coming,
on the clouds of heaven;
When he reached the Ancient One
and was presented before him,
The one like a Son of man received dominion, glory, and kingship;
all peoples, nations, and languages serve him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion
that shall not be taken away,
his kingship shall not be destroyed.

-- Dn 7:9-10, 13-14

Wednesday 2 August 2006

A demon will attach himself to you

If you create the idea of a Pure Land and your aim is to be saved by the vow of Amida, a demon will attach himself to you through that aim. Because doubt, like the great sky, has no subjective body, the demon has nothing to hold on to.

- Shosan

Tuesday 1 August 2006

Manifestations of the Mind

All such notions as causation, succession, atoms, primary elements...are all figments of the imagination and manifestations of the mind. - Buddha

One thing is certain, your body will get old, decay, and die. - Buddha

One thing is certain, your body will get old, decay, and die. - Buddha