Despair : Answers within Life’s many trials and tribulations - The Pain of Shattered Dreams

Of the many ways one can look at life, one is through the lens of sorrow (Note-1) and in despair (Note-2).

To experience shattered dreams and to be able to endure the pain is one of life's great privileges....

... the pain, knowing that you have shattered the hopes and dreams of those who depended on you,

.... the pain, knowing that you have to continue to live a life that gives hope and courage, dreams and light to all those who depend on you, so they can face the future, when you yourself can't,

... and the pain, knowing that you would let down those who depend on you as their savior, when the time comes to tell them that you do not have all the answers, that there is no light at the end of the tunnel, and there is no hope.

Only a privileged few would have the good fortune of experiencing such lessons in life and live to benefit from it.  Fortuity, perhaps, perhaps not.  Some of us may have indeed experienced such lessons, but only to become over-whelmed and consumed, and thought best to seek solace in greener pastures elsewhere. But, the answer may well be lost within, for what we seek is within our “self” and nowhere else.

 

Note-1: Sorrow in this context is the regret for the loss of something or someone loved or something for someone loved and the resultant unpleasant and unhappy state.

Note-2: Despair in this context is the loss or complete loss or absence of hope, hope being the expectation and desire for a particular thing to happen and feeling that arises with it and the resulting bad feelings in its not happening. 

More You Know the Less You Know

Can you see what it is?

Interesting or annoying?

Just an optical illusion to play with?

Maybe, maybe not?

But can it talk to us? Tell us something we don't know or think we know, but not really know or understand?

Let me tell you, you can read this only by means of direct cognition and direct perception - that means if your knowledge,  memory, views and preconceived notions don't participate in the cognitive process. No inferences.

When seeing "just see" - seeing for what it is rather than what it should be.

Can we do that? How do we do that? 

Well, very young children do that all the time, such as when they select some object for it's attractive color rather than its value or some other attribute that you and I would, instead.

Well, if you must know of one technique, is to open your mind wide, stay in the moment for sometime, let's free us from the pulls and tugs of knowledge, then take a glance at it with wide open eyes. The best way to open your mind wide is to look at the sky to the clouds and beyond, out into the universe. 

Some of us may be able to do that by contriving various methods, and that's when we try to deceive ourselves from deceiving ourselves. Mental contrivance is not going to yield results, at least to most of us.. 
 
Sounds funny?  But true?

And, does that mean we see everything just the way we want to see it and not really for what it is?

Does that mean we are being deluded by what we sense, we are deluding ourselves all the time?

If we do find it annoying then why would that be?    

• because we cannot see what we would like to see?
• because nothing is fitting into the preconceived frames of mind through which we sense the world?
• because it doesn't fit into our molds and patterns? 
• Because what we see is what we are trained to see, which we like to see?

Let's see, what are what we call optical illusions, because that's what would come to our mind when we see this.  

And some may think it's childish or stupid. Is it?

Or, are we deluding ourselves?

How much of what we know and what we are taught helps us in this process of deluding ourselves? 
 
I suppose it happens all the time, does it?

So, that would mean the more we know would actually mean the less we know?

"The more you know the more you don't know", said Aristotle.

Optical illusions we would call it. What do we know of it?

We would say it's a visual perception, one that would appear to differ from reality? Yes, that's the short definition.

And, some have indeed gone further, such as to identify them as physical, physiological, and cognitive illusions - and each into ambiguities, distortions, paradoxes, and fictions, and so on.

And, so, if it differs from reality then that would mean it differs from our delusion of reality?

And, what would that mean? Would that mean that our reality is a delusion?

And would that mean that we are living in a world of our own created in our own minds? In a fantasy?

For what purpose? Why would we want to do that?  

Well, who cares, so long as we enjoy it , that's all that matters? Isn't it?  
 
Really?

But, funnily enough, we don't like others deluding us, do we?

So, that means it's alright as long as we delude  ourselves?

But then, we are very agreeable to putting  people away in mental institutions saying that they are suffering from delusion. So we say.

Is that because we are being deluded into believing that they are suffering from delusion, obviously a delusion different to our own?

And, this cognitive process as we see may well be deluded to the extent of a factor of three, as you can see with the word delusion occurring three times.

I suppose you could be  thinking about this as you read this.

So, that would mean that I have created a delusion for you, or say, playfully, I am deluding you into deluding yourself to delude yourself (delude yourself to come to whatever conclusion you may come to, which is a delusion).

So, how deluded are we? Collectively? Because we are all deluding each other, all the time. Aren't we?

Sounds scary?
Or,  just fantasy?
Or, am I deluded?
Or, are you?
Are we both?
Or am I trying to deceive you by helping you delude yourself?

Well, simply put it's just reality, a created reality, a conceptual contrived reality, a deluded reality that is our reality.
 
We just don't know what is real and what is not real. We never will, we never did. We have no clue of what is true and what is false. 
 
Many of us embark on journeys to seek the truth, a truth we think is found in scriptures, or some other place, or in some person. And, by doing so, what do we really seek?  Knowledge? More of the same?
 
So, shouldn't we be seeking the truth elsewhere? in the beyond? Beyond "knowledge" and "concept"? 

Ponder at leisure.

Abstract Art, the Art of Regression

Paint a picture, do so by all means. Let yourself go. Look at it later, what did you paint? 

You have may have some idea what it is, but not quite. And, so you will contrive a theme, adduce a reason, or manifest an emotion. Some of these may represent what it is, some may not, but none ever all of what it is, in the subtext.

Abstract art is a representation of the hidden reality in what is our apparent reality, an apparent reality influenced by the senses in the present depicted in imagery. 

It would be incorrect to characterize it as a departure from reality in depiction of imagery in art, as most do including Wikipedia. It mirrors the mind, our emotions, what we see of the outside, a presumed outside of a presumed inside. Such presumptions are always of the deluded kind, deluded by the underlying emotions. 

It may manifests unresolved suppressed dark emotions of trauma of the past, perhaps many lifetimes that we all possess in some degree. 

Most of us can relate with the abstract as it translates into imagery what would otherwise be the mute sub-vocal unconscious, our own. It may not make much sense to some of us as it can distort what we consider accurate representation, our own subjective. 

The color of your face can seem white to me when it is black but that depends on how I color my own mind. Seeing the world as happy or sad just depends on what or how I feel inside of me. It maybe that I am just confused and angry, and then that is what it is. That is how our mind is when we are confused and angry. And how I feel and see the inside of me is how I see my outside. 

Our reality is what we make it to be, a construct, our own. Mine is different to yours. And it may be different to a collective standard, a collective subjective. 

And, it allows our mind to vent our pain, it unlocks our hidden emotions. It is our unconscious. 

So, let’s see if we can read it, let’s regress our mind.

Here’s a simple technique I have devised. 

When you are of settled mind, not disturbed by all of your chores and errands take the picture that you painted, hold it before you. Look at it, look at every detail carefully, and take it into your mind. But do not think of anything, of why or what you did. It is just taking an impression of the image into your mind.

Now close your eyes, just settle down. Take your time. Try visualizing the image, just what you saw. Try to get its afterimage as clear as possible. It is now before you in your mind’s eye. Now become one with it, go into it and see it as a mirror of your mind and rest on it. Lose yourself in it, let go. Let your mind proliferate and just observe, have awareness without contrivance. Settle in and just observe what comes to mind. 

And soon, your mind will begin to reveal all of what was locked in it, a representation of which was transferred into the canvass. You can relive the moments. 

There is no use in regressing, back to a past if you cannot use it to heal so it can benefit the present and give you closure. 

Emotions always involve our self and someone else. And, that someone else may well be our self. It may also be a hotchpotch of both and that makes it more difficult to differentiate between one or the other, as to which is which, that continue to fester with new emotions.  

We can only resolve what remains in our minds that prick and poke us, has the potential to affect us in the present, by understanding and compassion. Most importantly, understanding ourselves and of compassion to ourselves.

The understanding is one that recognizes and accepts that all of us are just human beings driven by emotion, by anger and aversion, by desire and attachment and by just delusion of the confused mind. And whatever we do or did was done in such minds, just as would a drunkard at times of drunkenness. 

It is to have the understanding that to harp on in the present out of a Harken to the unresolved of a past, and to live it in the present is none other than out of our own foolishness.

And, then by placing ourselves in the position of our tormentor, a tormentor who caused torment by his own implosion we feel an empathy from within for such foolishness. We feel a sense of compassion for both our self as tormentor and our self as the tormented. 

And, in compassion, a compassion that arises once we are devoid of wickedness and indignation we find love, a love that is absent of ill will, love and compassion from a pain now extinguished.

There are many others ways we can express our unconscious. Melody, song and prose are some, and of course certain types of meditation and hypnosis.

This is Water – Undoing the David Foster Wallace

Recently I was introduced to the talk given by David Foster Wallace (Note 1) titled “This is Water ” (Note 2), sent to me “in the context of an awareness of the subconscious, what he refers to as the default setting”, which talk later materialized into a book. 

It appears to be a wonderful presentation. Over 2 million people have viewed it so far on Youtube. Wallace makes a compelling statement which appeals to “something” in us, it seizes us on the blindside.

Wallace keeps it real when he starts, seeing things for what they are. Then he veers off to creating his own people out of what he saw. It was a reflection, of his, his own reality, a dark reality. Everything was doom and gloom. This is what fiction is, creating an alternate reality, by putting pen to paper of what is otherwise a mental reflection. 

It is wrong for us to think that the lady manning the register at the checkout counter is frustrated and fed up, of the long lines before her and everything else. That would be so if she has a problem herself. Most of us do not have a bad mental disposition that makes us perceive as bad, long queues or crying children or loud phones. We may have something particular that bothers us but that does not make us pissed off with ourselves all the time. And, most of us do things spontaneously without giving it a second thought, like helping someone.  Most people are generally happy. This is what we can find if we talk to people and find out for ourselves. Anything we infer comes from a place of our own likes and dislikes.

My natural default setting is not the “ego” self, which is an innate self-centered selfish nature in the ordinary sense in normal speak. And an ego self does not mean that everything else and everyone else is repulsive, or dead-eyed, or stupid, inhuman, or annoying or rude. It maybe so if we are in fact self-centered and selfish. And, I do not automatically experience everything to be boring, and frustrating. Most don’t think that way. To say this is the default setting only reinforces a view conditioning us to think so, by default, in duality.

The ego is the self-nature we see in ourselves and we see in others and things outside of us. We give each object a self and permanence to its existence. And we look for and see good and bad in everything and a like and dislike or neutrality, when we create our impressions of it. We give everything a name, shape, and a quality to it, which comes from us. In short we create everything including ourselves. We are duped into believing that we have a “self” but it is something we cannot find in ourselves.

If we must call something “default setting” then it is that we pursue pleasure and what is pleasurable and flee pain.  

All of us are ego beings but that does not mean we have a particular default setting that manifests as one state of mind - a default setting that supports a belief that “I am the absolute center of the universe, most vivid and important person in existence”. We are not “hard-wired at birth with this default setting”. We are not innately self-centered and selfish, which requires us to consciously think and act to suppress it. So a choice of whether we should continue in default or not does not arise. We have several states of mind, various times various mind, ever changing ever conditioning, that takes paths, and runs in streams or trains of mind. 

We have no “choice” although we would like to think we do. What we think is always guided by our habits, our sub-conscious. But we do have “will”, free will, which presents itself to us at the very birth of thoughts, at the impulsion phase. It is the phase during which full cognition takes place, in the 17-moment thought process, according to Buddhist psychology, which explains the working of free will more simply than Western psychology. At this phase we can again fall prey to influences of our habit consciousness. It can be seen in decisions we make out of ethical or moral considerations, when they may determine how our thoughts run. It is here that we can exercise mindfulness, awareness. Awareness must be bare awareness devoid of a need to conform to a certain state or disposition. 

If we can see things for what they are then what is evident as the talk progresses is that Wallace reflects his own mind on what he sees. He creates others of him and wrongly infers that others perceive and feel what he does of them. So he creates people out of his own imagination and feels depressed for them, out of his feelings of being them. In doing so he asserts his perceptions, which involves conceit (and separation from others), and creates his view of himself in countless others. In this manner he reinforces his ego, the perception of an imaginary or ideal ‘self”. And he addresses feelings that conflict with this creation that leads to confusion and depression, by asserting that it is the norm.

If you think again, his characterization of all he sees is depressing and he attempts to synthesize the confusion in emotion by asserting his view that it is the default setting, which he does by interpreting it to himself first and then to the world. By this means his ego devises the way to exist without self-destruction. Groceries shopping after work can be a refreshing experience if we allow ourselves to experience it, without projecting our anger, frustrations and emotions into it. 

We need to see things for what they are and not what we want them to be. There is nothing good or bad in anything or anyone unless we make it so, if we create it so. To see things for what they are is to see it just, as we would see the window frame when we look out until such time we find resistance when we hit our object – that is when we bear upon it all of our notions, experience and emotions. Try seeing beyond what we see, really. Try seeing things beyond shape, beauty, financial value, and so on. We can practice that by seeing through the object whilst seeing it, just like the window frame. We can also do so with representations of objects in our mind – an object we manifest in our minds. And then see how we can gradually change the way we think. As we know, most of us, we do not think of beauty or fat or thin or anything else when we think of our mother, father, brothers and sisters, wife or girl friend. We see past all of it (Note 3). It does not even figure in our thoughts, it makes no difference to us. What would then make the difference to us is the unconscious that feels their happiness and sadness.

Excessive self centered and selfish behavior that makes us unable to see pleasure but only pain is at odds with the very core of our ego-being that was born in the sensual plane out of a need for sensual experience and gratification. So here is the conflict. If we cannot overcome this conflict it must result in the destruction of the ego and the self, initially manifesting in a self-pitiful disposition, later in depression, and eventually in suicide.

And, the “something” that appealed to us and blindsided us that was given to us in the form of empathizing with others is a reflection of our pity rather than compassion. We are blindsided when we see and hear what we like to see and hear. 

Pity is not compassion, it is an emotion that arises not from compassion but from selfishness. It is a conscious act of thought, or of thought and deed, which is a benevolent act, which is consciously acted out. Compassion is not a conscious act as some would like to believe. Compassion arises out of the sub-conscious, the unconscious, from the goodness of our heart, which sounds a banal platitude no doubt. It is what it is for what arises from the sub-conscious and what is unconscious is what we think from our heart and not our mind.

Compassion arises in the absence of wickedness. Wickedness arises from pride. It also arises from the absence of mental pain, when we are not pained personally by what we experience – which is when we are thankful, consciously or unconsciously, that it is not us who are pained. It is when we do not see our own pain as our own but rather others pain as our own. This happens when there is an absence of separation, between “I” and “You”, so I feel as you do.

Proud, we may think we are not, as no pride we show, but it does exist in us subliminally, in thoughts when we delight in, in what we think out and assert to ourselves, our view of things and the world. And when something does not agree with our views, as little as it maybe, we have something that swells in us, a certain indignation that may show up as a change in the color in our face, an opposition to what we sense, which compels us to assert what we believe in, from which may arise a certain wickedness in our effort to safeguard our belief. That is when we tell ourselves “serve him right, he should not have done that. He deserves what he gets”. Out goes compassion.

According to psychoanalysts 95% of our emotions are determined by our subconscious. All of it is the workings of the subtle mind, the unconscious. It is what is there and we do not sense. It shows up in all of our unconscious acts, and the subtle body language, which is once again estimated to constitute about 95% of all of our communication. Take a moment, pause to think, we can see it well in our monkey mind, the mind that jumps from one to another – of thoughts that appears to spring from nowhere and seem to vanish to nowhere when replaced by another.

When we are blindsided, we do not see, and what blindsides us, like what Wallace does which is read by our subconscious, evaluated and interpreted by emotion, experience and the state of mind present, can easily manipulate our thoughts. And they are unconsciously inscribed in us, in our subconscious, for future reference, future evaluation. It happens to us at every level, from birth, and every time we put on the TV or listen to news selectively presented to us, either consciously by those who wish to manipulate us or unconsciously, like Wallace, from pity for others, a mistaken goodness out of ignorance.

If an action arises out of pity then it is a benevolent action. But a benevolent action can arise from both pity and the heart, from compassion – from love, from experiencing joy for others and from evaluating things with an even mind, without discrimination - of mine or not mine, or what is like mine or not like mine. We also see it everywhere, when we mind our own business, when we close our mind to us from others, mistaking that minding our own business is the best policy, when we should in fact be exercising discriminating awareness. It is wisdom in action, rather than ignorance in inaction or stupidity in action.

For us to be able to see it that way we need to resolve the confusion we have in our own mind. It is the confusion that arises from the ego in its tussle between feelings and perceptions that we talked of earlier, which is beyond our usual conscious awareness. This is bare awareness, seeing things for what it is, involves both seeing us and seeing things outside of us.

Wallace was long winded in his commencement speech, long enough to mishmash in confusion. But most may disagree due to the plenty of ear-catching allegory that spins the mind to what we like and what we relate to. And so we would tend to pick and chose and find our way. And what remains is our concise edition of it, which would be what is more or less found in the video, is a good enough snapshot to come to the analysis I have. 

Wallace gets it right when he speaks of the Capital “T” truth, that “ value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over: "This is Water"". It could perhaps be paraphrased to read “real education has nothing to do with rote learning or scholarism but simple awareness, an awareness of our self and the nature of all things”. It must surely be wisdom and awareness and not awareness out of ignorance.

Wallace says real freedom “is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing”, is in fact wisdom. It is a difficult truth to arrive at for those of us who are in the “Wallace default setting”, that he says he is in when he says “If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won't consider possibilities that aren't annoying and miserable", especially when we are so blatantly, cogently told so, and we unconsciously tell ourselves that that is indeed the default setting.  It would be delusional to think we can control everything with our conscious mind, doing so would be like trying to keep the tsunami away by closing the gate to our backyard.

Freedom is abundance of thoughts, feelings, objects, hope and love, when we understand the way how all things actually exists, one devoid of an essence of good or bad, one that is impermanent except when it is in our minds, one that is to be enjoyed for what it is. It is freedom from concept, from fear, from doom, and gloom. 

It is when we release ourselves from the shackles of the mind, that keeps us imprisoned, boxed in, give us fear. It is just emancipation from it all, like when the lid is blown off the head, like when we kept everything behind when we had that real vacation sometime in our life, perhaps in our childhood, long before we became “Wallace default set”. It is when we can see the best in us and us at our best.

To do so we need to separate ourselves from what separates us. We need to separate our self-nature from what we think. We need to be less and less judgmental. We need to separate our disappointments, our sadness, our anger, and our notions from the image, the person behind the image. We need to see it “just” and not from separation. We could also see things in their duality, from happiness, out of love and compassion.

Listening to Foster Wallace was disturbing. He should never have been allowed to make that speech to so many young minds. It teaches impressionable minds to think in a way that transfers their own negativity to everything else, creating a reality of gloom. It also gives them a “norm” of a misconceived “default setting” that enables the subconscious to find refuge in the confusion thereby initiating the conscious mind to follow suit and inhibiting an otherwise conscious mind from being put upon inquiry. Had the reflections been of joy or bare awareness then the outcome would be completely different. 

Anyone who thinks in the way that the speech reveals, based on their own feelings or on the observations of someone else’s, would be how their subconscious works, must suffer from depression. And, by believing that the way to get out of the default setting is to constantly remind oneself of it Wallace only makes it worse, which could well lead to clinical depression (Note 4). Although most people who have depression do not kill themselves, suicide rates among those who are diagnosed as clinically depressed appear to be high (Note 5). 

One of the four sub types of suicide is Egoistic suicide (Note  6) . It reflects the prolonged sense of not belonging and not experiencing integration in a community. It is the result of "excessive individuation", that is when the individual becomes increasingly detached from other members of his community, which can give rise to meaninglessness, apathy, melancholy, and depression. 

So this led me to look further, and I found that Foster Wallace committed suicide three years later. He had suffered, not surprisingly, from deep depression. I may sound unkind in my critique, but this is what it is, the product of a confused and conflicted mind, in pain.  

Wallace was in fact crying out for help. But sadly none of us were able to see it then. Instead we patted him on the back only to reinforce his own view and divide between what is real and what is fiction.

What the two plus million hits on Youtube and all the positive comments that have been made tells us is that a majority of us could relate to the “Wallace default setting” in one way or another. That could be something troubling given the statistics that reveal that about 10% of all Americans suffered from depression at some point in their lives in 2012, up from 5% in 2005-2006. It is a broad statistic I agree, which has many components to it including depression caused by terminal illnesses which has been on the increase, that could skew it off whack, to wit, discount we should not, for it is the body that tells what the mind thinks.

Someone needs to undo “This is Water” of Wallace. It is a psychological cluster bomb in that it is something that conditions our subconscious by our tacit acceptance of the “Wallace default setting” as the norm, upon which we can fall back on, out of self-pity or as a defence mechanism, with symptoms of depression manifesting later and much later on. It will alter our reality, how we see the world, as one of darkness, doom and gloom, and from a mistaken sense of compassion.

Notes:

1. David Foster Wallace (1962 -2008), American novelist, professor of English and creative writing. His novel Infinite Jest in 1996 was cited by Time magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.                                                                                       
2. Commencement speech given by David Foster Wallace at Kenyon College on May 21, 2005. Kenyon College, a private liberal arts college in Gambier, Ohio, United States, founded in 1824 by Philander Chase is the oldest private college in Ohio and is affiliated with the Episcopal Church. It was later followed by an essay titled “Some thoughts, delivered on a significant occasion, about living a compassionate life", and a book.                                                                                  
3. The Buddhist classification of all things would make us see things for just what they are, what we would if we were to see all things for their functions as the supporting, binding, maturing and motion elements, that have properties of hardness or softness, cohesion and flowing, hot and cold and expansion and contraction, figuratively known as earth, water, fire, and wind.         
4. Clinical depression or Major depressive disorder (MDD), is a mental disorder characterized by a pervasive and persistent low mood that is accompanied by low self-esteem and by a loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities and must be severe enough to cause noticeable problems in relationships with others or in day-to-day activities, such as work, school or social activities.                                                                                                                        
5. To be diagnosed with clinical depression, one must have five or more symptom for major depressive disorder stated in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), published by the American Psychiatric Association, over a two-week period, most of the day, nearly every day. At least one of the symptoms must be either a depressed mood or a loss of interest or pleasure.                                                                                                                                                
6. One of the four sub types of suicide according to French sociologist Émile Durkheim is Egoistic suicide, which reflects a prolonged sense of not belonging, of not being integrated in a community, an experience of the absence of something that tethers one, that can give rise to meaninglessness, apathy, melancholy, and depression. He refers to this type of suicide as the result of "excessive individuation", meaning that the individual becomes increasingly detached from other members of his community.

Abundance - of Nothing and Everything

Make a sound, any sound, well, ring a bell. Listen. What happens?

The sound will dissipate. If you ring a bell or sound a gong you can in fact see this happening easily as it happens slowly. So, where does it go? Light a fire, let it go off. Where does it go?

It dissipates and is absorbed within our own environment or dimension? Maybe. Sound would seem likely to do that. What about light? What about thought? Doesn’t it in fact go to some place, a place that we cannot perhaps see?  So a place where nothing exists, a place we cannot see, a place of nothing or nothingness?  Fire before the fire and after the fire is a simile used by the Buddha to describe nothingness, a different dimension to ours.  

Physics tell us that nothing is destroyed, it is only transformed from one state to another. And photons of light are absorbed by the surroundings. Physicists tell us that gravitational force is the weakest of the 4 forces, the other three being electromagnetic, weak and strong nuclear, which could possibly be due to it falling on another dimension. Quantum physics also tell us that light may be both a particle and a wave at the same time. And so part of it maybe falling in other dimensions, out of ours, the Einsteinian space-time dimension. It maybe going somewhere as it can never be destroyed, but where ever it goes it is out of our periphery, our world, our dimension. 


So it is there, and somewhere and no where – the place called Sunyata, which is a non-place, which is out of phenomena, a non-concept, a noumena. So says Buddhism. It is beyond dimension – the space-time dimension.

Everything is in this non-dimension. And yes, we can take it back to dimension. And it can come back to us like the echo of a voice.

Why can’t we see it? We can’t because we have taken things for granted and all of what we see are personal and misconceived. We have taken for granted what we see, when we see this holographic image before us as cast in stone, that the world is flat in our reality, where the surface is large. It is also the reality of the ant, that knows east and west or north and south but not of up and down. It is also our misconception that the ocean is a limitless place of abundance that seem to absorb all what we put in it, and so on.

When we make a statement or think a thought it is said, done, sealed, and delivered to the non-place. We cannot withdraw it. It will come back to us when the conditions are right. Yes, everything is there. It is a place of abundance. It has all, the good and the bad and the neither, and the nor-not, and in a place without, without of this description, of conception.

Since we cannot see the non-place we cannot take what we like and leave what we don’t. But, yes, we can do something. We can do something like catching the wave head-on or avoiding it. We can avoid it by positioning our self to do so.

If we position our self by doing good deeds, having good thoughts and indulging in good actions then we can make the path, or open the path, for good to come to us. Yes, all of have the potential to make an abundance of good to come to us or in other words connect to the abundance. Good deeds are the wholesome deeds, and wholesome deeds are the ones that are wholesome to us, beneficial to us, and bring us happiness.

The next time we have a quiet moment, perhaps in meditation, try reaching this place of nothingness. Shut your mouth – your speech of mind, and thought, lay still, do not make ruffles. Open your mind, allow yourself to settle in, go beyond the feelings you encounter – maybe physical pains or contentment and mental thrill, rapture and elation. Lie still, very still. Try reaching out to the place of nothingness. Experience it. See what happens. Just observe and do nothing.

We will not see anything but soon perhaps we will notice and hear something. We will hear a frequency, a noise like short-wave, just like in the radio. 

Yes, you are hearing it. It is you. It is not tinitis, your ears are not playing tricks with you. It is the noise your mind is making, from its vibrations. It is the noise that it is making when you are at rest. It maybe high, it maybe low, depending on how fast your mind is working. For most of us it is an alpha wave length on the electroencephalograph.

If we are able to slow ourselves down sufficiently than we will be able to experience something of nothingness. It is like jumping from one train to another. We have to make the faster train slower in order for you to get into the slower train. 

And, now, finally, perhaps, we will begin to see it, see the non-place, feel the non-place, feel the matrix, that there is something out there in nowhere which actually is everything we are.

And, the next time we say or think of things be mindful that we are putting it out there, just like pining things on a board in front of us.

We can continue to see the picture in front of us, in our mind’s eye, it is a complete blank of nothingness, we observe and observe the frequency. The frequency we have depends on the thoughts we had and have. Now there is no image but just the sound. We settle in to this as a passive observer, making no inquiry making no statement. Observe and enjoy the show. 

Our frequency is the frequency of our mind at rest. It is our inner self, our sub-conscious.

And then we will begin to see light, a light, which will be there until it goes away. And as we watch on we will begin to see what our frequency is made up of  – the images it represents. We are converting the frequency into image. Sit back, and enjoy the show.

We will begin to see images. Some we may recognize. Most we may not. Some can be vague, some can be clear as being before us for real. This is you, from your past, what is embedded in your mental continuum.

The mind at rest, between two sensory thoughts is known as bhavanga in Theravada Buddhism. It is also what is known as the sub-conscious. Cognition involves arresting the bhavanga, and once the act of cognition is complete the mind falls back into bhavanga.

We can chose not to watch the show and go on beyond. We can allow the sub-conscious mind to lay before us its show just as the conscious mind did. We can observe and not participate, but let go. And then, soon we will come to a place of no thought, a place between two thoughts. Tibetan Buddhists call this place “rigpa” – the mind of pure awareness.

The more we take this route the more proficient we will become at finding our way. And the more we find our way the more we will see the way back, and back to the future. 

Elements – The Great Wisdom of the Elements

(Revised 14-February 2016)

Understand the elements and you understand it all.

Dawn at Bellanwila, Sri Lanka 2015.  Photo by: Anusha Attapattu

Pure consciousness is pure radiance, it is luminous emptiness. It is like no other radiance, no other light.  It is beyond conceptualization, out of thought. It is incomparable to light of lightening or not, bright or brighter or not, a thousand fluorescent lamps or xenon lights or not. 

It is like the fire before the fire. There is no comparison.

And then there is separation, like the prism shone light, or rainbow in its dazzle, when luminosity shows itself, its manifestation. These are its elements. They are seen as yellow, red, white, and green. They manifest qualities of earth, fire, water and wind.

Earth, fire, water and wind as they are figuratively known are everything, mind and matter. They transcend lives, life times and dimensions. They encompass everything we know and don’t, unlike what we know of the periodic table. All of its qualities are subjective and personal, of a physical and mental state.  The evaluation of our experience of them is created by separation, to which extent we are deluded.

They are known as the primary elements as they are inseparable. When they combine with derived secondary elements, 20 other elements and consciousness we can separate them, sense them, experience them, and evaluate them. Primary elements are elements by itself, without consciousness they mean nothing to us. It is the quality of intent (or no intent) in consciousness that enables our manifestation of the qualities of the elements, our reality. This is the way to understand the elements. Adducing qualities to elements by themselves is conjecture. 

This understanding of the elements and the classification of atoms and elements in atoms in our virtual world of reality is what sets apart the Buddhist classification from the rest of the classifications based on elements. However, we can express our experience and evaluation in terms of the qualities of the primary elements. 

Earth is hardness, solidity or shape. It is the base of all things on which the other elements can find support to stage its manifestations. 

Earth Yellow.
Earth is form. 
Earth is aversion, anger and hatred 
Examine Earth and you find the Wisdom of Mirror awareness  - of non-duality, of no separation and ever united with its 'content' as a mirror is with its reflections, out of which union nothing is in awareness. 

Water is fluidity. It brings things together. It has no shape of its own and is shaped by what it encounters. It is also our feelings. Master your feelings to master your world.

Water is White. 
Water is pride.
Water is feeling.
Examine Water to find the white light of the Wisdom of Sameness or equality of all things, phenomena.

Fire is heat. It has the effect of melting and combining. It burns earth and disappears into where ever it goes, into the divine space. It can give us life and also take it away.

Fire is red.
Fire is perception and conceptualization.
Fire is desire.


Examine Fire and find the wisdom of discriminatory awareness, so we appreciate the conceptual and non-conceptual, what is true and what is false. 

Fire comes from nowhere into our conceptualization and goes out into nowhere out of our conceptualization
But a fire can certainly leave its mark in its wake, whilst in our conceptualization. 

Wind is what drives all of it. It is what keeps our bodies erect. It is what propels our minds to thought. It is what propels our elements, the collection of elements from one place to another, one being to another, one life to another. 

Wind is Green.  
Wind is jealousy
Wind is mental formations or experience. 
Examine Wind and find the All Accomplishing Wisdom – Free from partiality and Grasping. An awareness and equanimity through which one spontaneously accomplishes all things for benefit of all beings.

Take the wind off of your sails and you go nowhere. Yes. We know it well. When we are winded our minds go blank. When we are lethargic our mind lazy, we have no wind in our sails.

And, there is space; it is the space within our hearts that our minds rest. It has all of the four elements.

Space is blue, clear and luminous, like the sky unlimited and

unclouded. 
Consciousness is Space.
Consciousness is Wisdom.
Consciousness is Ignorance.
Examine Space and find the Wisdom of Suchness – the bare non-conceptualizing awareness, and of all the other four elements

Wind and Earth combines to give Sensation, Smell and Sound that result. It is what happens when wind hits your ear drums that creates more wind in vibration to make fire light up earth to give you sight and perception. 

Earth and Fire combines and Sight results.

Light your fire red and hot to end up wanting it in desire.

Earth and Water combines and it is taste that result. Eat food, salivate and have taste that feels. Yellow and white combines to give more or less yellow as in tastier or not so or not at all. Mix it with green as wind and make it bitter or sweet.

All the elements in good combine and we are in our element. It is ease, peace and contentment. Too much of one thing is no good for another thing. It is disease, war and discontentment. 

Too much of earth makes us heavy, sloppy and lazy. Too much of wind makes the base earth tremble. And, when the base earth trembles, all of the rest crumbles.

Disease and disharmony in the winds can be seen through anger and depression, stress and pain, and other mental disease. It is also what makes our blood and bile to malfunction. And so we have pressure upsets and wind. 

Fire, earth, and water bring cohesion. Cold, earth, and water bring less cohesion. It is when we have like and attachment, dislike and aversion.  

Water in harmony is cohesion in equanimity, when in harmony with earth, fire, water and wind, the absence hot and cold, like and dislike, and attachment and aversion. 

Fire and water out of proportion is out of harmony or in dis-equilibrium, when there is like and attachment, lust and greed. 

What is in ease and harmony is in joy and in attraction. What is in disease and disharmony is in pain and non-attraction.

Harmony is wholesome; disharmony is unwholesome. Harmony is equanimity; disharmony is lust, desire and greed. It is the simple truth of all things. It is the universal Law of Attraction and the universal Law of Repulsion.

When winds run up to our minds subjective and objective minds result. When the winds are at the center it makes thoughts from the heart and of comfort.

When winds makes the earth crumble there is disturbance, destruction and disintegration. What happens in the mind and body can be seen outside of the mind and body, of war and destruction. 

So we witnessed when we saw all of the paving stones unearthed from the winds of anger and thrown at the Police in Mongkok, Hong Kong, just last week on 11 February 2016. 

Rulers could take heed, from some wise rulers of yore, who took note of earth, the one that provides stability. Earth is the base, of our basic needs, of housing, food, of all that is required for our ease of sustenance. When fire of desire of forces outside of the realm fires the earth it creates a whirlwind and explosion. Address these issues and solve the problem of disease and division, of disturbance and destruction. What is required is the harmony of the elements. 

Dao has shown us the way, of harmony and ease, of meeting wind with wind. Creating disharmony, ruling by division, creating divisions by whoever it maybe will sow the seeds of disintegration. 

Understanding the elements is to understand the mind, understand the body and understand the self. Managing the elements is to manage oneself. If we learn to manipulate the elements we learn to manipulate ourselves.

Where the mind or thought goes body and form follows. When we think we can see form or shape. And with wind, we move and create, to make it, to physically manifest. So we can make things and make things as we do. 

If we think below our navel or of our feet our body can relax physically, our mind becomes clearer. When we do that we are directing our minds to the door, one of the doors, that opens to consciousness. And that door is the door at the earth or the base channel wheel or chakra.

Elements converge at various spots in us. It is how things are. If we concentrate our minds on our stomach, at the secret place, the door of fire, we can make our bodies warm. 

Wisdom is consciousness. It is the combination of all the elements. Each of the doors can make the elements dissolve in consciousness, the central channel in our self.

At the basic level we are vibrations. Earth and wind make this vibration possible for us. Earth at the coarsest level ends with solidity. Earth at finer level takes form and shape like the rainbow. Earth is made of vibration. We are made of vibration. 

This vibration makes the various forms and shapes. It is what is

referred to as Secret geometry. It is what the letter “Om” symbolizes, the frequency of the sound of “Om”. It is beyond the wavelength of delta on the Electroencephalograph.

Everything can be seen on an electroencephalograph. It is not just teachings of the Veda, but that refined over time with our power of interpretation. It has been so possible with the wisdom of the great teachers in our times, with their ability to reach

the place of wisdom and break it down to us in more understandable terms. We are now able to validate and appreciate it with the tools available to us, to man, within his limitations.

Thought is mind, that wind gives mobility, that enables us to give it mobility and direct its path back to equilibrium and not to the upper part of our bodies out of equilibrium in a right or left channel that it likes to take, away from equilibrium at the center. It is this that results in our subjective and objective minds, away from our mind of one, of whole.

Where thought goes mind follows. So does body and form. So matter follows the mind. Since we think we have mass we make the wind move this mass to where our mind is. This is what we do when we intend to go anywhere. This is our limitation; a limitation set by our perception of solidified mass.

If we think or perceive mass as an element then it is our element that follows the mind and not mass. So mass, our own or mass of the environment creates no obstacle. Will it and you are there. Dare you, me and try it. We do all the time. Just like in a dream or in an outer-body-experience.

We live in our created environment. We have misconceived the elements and created our limitations. This is our reality. We live with these limitations all of our lives, ingrained in our minds as knowledge, experience and habit. It is the mis-manipulation of misunderstood elements, in ignorance out of ignorance. 

Likewise we do in our dreams. Fish live in theirs. So do spirits, ghosts and beings of other realms, in theirs. Insects do, in a dimension below ours, greater in solidity than ours, coarser in vibration than ours, and so does our mountains and rocks. 
  
If we solidify each element we create complete immobility of mind and matter, a dimension one or less if there is such a thing. We are at dimension two operating at dimension three by manipulating our perception – by the element of fire with wind. We do that by having two 2D eyes at just the right distance to give us 3D.

Blow wind on fire and you make the fire dance, which would have been otherwise immobile. Wind creates, and it is mental formation – all the ingredients that give the other elements their ability to use each other. Consciousness is the leader, the master, who enables it all, who knows it and is made to know it.

So we have the subject and object, and the experience and knowledge we impart on it. Fire and wind, red and green, makes it yellow or form. That is what we see as shape in our minds, which in turn break down to red as in perception and green as in experience. 

Experience and knowledge must combine the knowledge of all the elements with the knowledge of knowing or consciousness. It is both green as in wind and all of the colors. Taken by itself as a body it shows off as blue or a blue hue as in knowledge or consciousness. 

Tighter the combination, clearer the color, and finer the result, of knowledge and wisdom. If the leader or consciousness has clouded vision then what combines will be clouded in ignorance. Finer they combine clearer the vision and purer the knowledge. 

He who sees through tainted glass does not see anything other then taint. Clarity in taint is but taint in clarity.

Greater the separation coarser the vibration, denser the vision and cloudier the perception. 

And so we are different to the insect that has 2D vision and a hundred eyes. 

If we use fire and wind on earth we can move mass or earth. We can do so if we fan the fire with wind and blow it on earth. Move your wind into the door of fire to fan the fire on the earth and we can have levitation. When we move wind with our minds we can have lightness in body, as we have at times of meditation.        

When we begin to feel, to see and to experience the elements in this way we are already on our way to transcending this dimension to one of greater wisdom. 

"The first step towards wisdom consists in getting the elements into view. This requires considerable knowledge, practice and skill, but it is the indispensable basis for all that follows" – Edward Conze

"Those who do not have harmony in elements are condemned to suffer in their disharmony."  - Luminous Light, 13 February 2016