If we could try an experiment: If we could go an entire day void of using spoken language… This would pose interesting. If we could co-survive for three days without using verbal language, not only would human consciousness become unavoidably obvious,
but many systems of human interaction would prove faulty; and we would have no choice but to fall onto the ground, laughing at ourselves. Such medicinal laughter could promote longer life and a higher quality of trade and commerce. This global laughter could change whole attitudes throughout the world, and believe it or not, more plants would grow as a result. (Plants would thrive on the carbon dioxide expelled by global laughter.).
Ever since I completed reading The Way of Zen ,by Alan Watts, in 1998, I have been compelled to buy books. It was actually triggered by my first reading of The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac that had launched this pass-time. Since then, I have compiled an extensive library which I’m proud of. The formulation of my library has been the endowment of many circumstances- all intertwined, yet unrelated- a contradiction.
The Contradiction.
After reading The Dharma Bums as a teenager, my whole mind became open to a completely new, uncensored era of perceiving; and it slung-shot my writing into an unstoppable stream of creativity. My new understanding caused me to spend hours in the book store, becoming lost in the “Eastern Philosophy” section. When I picked up The Way of Zen, I flipped to the middle of the book in preview. I read one sentence. That sentence seamlessly melted into a paragraph, then, into a chapter. I purchased the book and consequently read it while I was“on the road”.
The Way of Zen instilled in me the unexplainable beauty of the human experience. It took any conceivable limit (I thought existed) and convinced me that such a limit was nothing more than a thought- not an actual boundary. The book made me realize that I am not a person in a hotel room- on a planet- in outer space. None of that exists. Only because I labeled it that way, did all those boundaries exist.
New thought patterns became fun, growing experiences for me. For every thought that I had, I immediately rendered the exact opposite Either ludicrous, or ever so profound, by instinctively looking for the opposite, I became somewhat liberated from my previous views, opinions and thought patterns. Through contradiction, I found peace.
I began to purchase more books of similar content. I started a small collection that I would (in procrastination) read some day. I wrote page after page of philosophical dialogue. I wrote and bound a three hundred page book using a Kerouac-like sing-song to mix my actual life with a storyboard and complimentary characters. After completing the book, I edited it over and over.
I poured every written idea I had into the book. All along, learning about the philosophy which my characters proclaimed to be experts of. After its completion, I felt many things.
I felt that I had penned all that needed to be said; that all of the ideas expressed in the book went without saying. Also, to pen any more would be redundant. Through my perception of Zen philosophy, I felt that writing any more would prove ignorance. Simply put, I took one of the old Zen sayings I had written about, and I took it literally. That saying is: “He who knows does not speak. He who speaks does not know.” I revered this quote so literally that my creativity came to a stand-still. I began to think that any writing was meaningless. Even that thinking (itself) was contrived and menial, causing the subject (the thinker) to miss the whole cosmic point, or that the act of thinking caused people to become unconnected with reality. This great contradiction has become a plague of sorts.
A Zen teacher pointing at the moon is void of ceremony. A Christian taking communion is ceremonial yet the respect exercised through such an act is short lived. Both are simple acts, not affirmations or devices of spiritual awakening. Trying to attain enlightenment is counterproductive, damaging even. But to not even attempt to attain enlightenment (or to not even attempt to live a good life according to a bible) would cause one to become spiritually lackadaisical. Which is precisely why my creativity had come to a stop.
To “try” was to venture farther from the truth. To write was to indulge in ignorance. Therefore, to refrain from writing and to let the world do what it does without analyzing it, would, in time, prove useful. Through experience, I have found that neither cases are true.
Whether one writes to prove a point or just for entertainment, there is one underlying factor that pushes a writer forward. In this case, I am referring to one who has come to a stop- who is convinced that growth can no longer be established through the means of literature. That underlying factor is simply this: Writing (reading, perceiving; all of our senses) are human experiences. Human experiences lose their enjoyment when they are judged. Judging takes you away from the Now, causing you to become involved in a cycle of comparison. During the judgment of an experience, we stop experiencing all together. The music we listen to is no longer beautiful and moving, but becomes single notes- one after the other; and dancing steps are no longer fluid, they become technical, planned and non-flowing.
My writing started out as an expression of my views, but quickly became a learning, exploratory endeavor. I wrote of being bound by doctrine, but in the end, I believed that any type of structure was, indeed, destructive. My ability to think opposites became inhibitive- a vicious cycle that, after a while, bought me right back to the starting point- a narrow view. “In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind, there are few.”
This contradiction has been hard to accept. And even accepting it could cause one to just submit and no longer grow. But just because you stop trying doesn’t mean that every breath you take is not a new, abundant and everlasting one. After all, how long is eternity?
One meditates for many reasons. It feels good. If one does it with an expectation, or a goal of growth, one can become frustrated by the lack of outcome; one could lose interest altogether. Meditation is like a puppy playing. The moment’s enjoyment is the result. The puppy does not survey how much fun it is having while it is playing. Furthermore, it is building necessary skills for later survival. After all, young pups and lion cubs playing are imitating fighting situations. They are developing attacks, reaction timing and tricks of escape along with building muscular and cardiovascular fitness.
So, to meditate in hopes of attainment is a sure-fire way of developing habits not indigenous to the act- habits that, once developed, can become damaging staples that are difficult to erase from muscular and mental memory. Once one has experienced the benefits of the true meditative state, they realize that peace is simply peace. Peace is not the delusion of a person sitting in an unbreakable state, breathing and humming in a sacred, obscure way.
Through imagination, meditation can become an altercation; or it can become as spontaneous and enjoyable as a young boy playing a trick on his sister (unaware that someone is watching him.) Meditation is neither a state of complete seriousness nor is it a state of incoherence. It is a state of feeling- not just by touch and not through emotion. Even though all senses such as feel, hearing, sight and all emotional realms do become more sensitive through the awareness acquired through meditation, those senses alone are not used to explore the meditative state. I would say that it is a state of, “here I am right now; the Human Experience is a thing of beauty… This is the answer, the panacea…” But again, that is not the purpose of meditation. Meditation transcends all of our understandings that we are humans feeling and seeing things. Meditation goes beyond what we have been conditioned to understand. It is by no means magical, though. More accurately, it is an awareness that life is magical!
Now, your definition of “magic” may be different than mine. If you are a Christian, is not magic the fact that God made the heavens and the earth? Your definition of “magic” is most likely obsolete. After all, just because we label a color “blue”, how do you show blue to a blind man? How can you taste “blue” on the end of a fork? If we labeled the color “blue” “magic” instead of blue, than when we saw blue, we would think (the word) “magic”. The simple point is, just because you have your own perception of what “magic” is, (regardless if you believe it exists or not) does that abstract mental process really define “magic”? Does a blind man think the same things you do when he hears the phrase “Black Magic”?
Meditation is not a magic cure for anything. It is a sanctuary in a sense. The church is always there; you can always pray- Sunday or not! Meditation is a good musical performance in which a musician surpasses his own boundaries and enjoys being able to play with no effort- amazed and listening as if he were just watching (from above). The musician’s imagination is what causes him to cross and surpass his boundaries. His imagination opens him to a limitless consciousness through which he can continue to learn more as a result. He is still the same body when he puts the instrument down. He still has to eat and breath. In the back of his mind though, he is open to new musical ideas and shall practice them next time he plays. As in meditation- there is no limit- there is no stopping point. As the musician will evolve next time he picks up the instrument, and he must eat and sleep, meditating people must be Human. They cannot perform magic. But they can experience life as a song that plays itself effortlessly.
When this precipice has been reached, the musician does not have to “try” as hard to express his music. But in this, he must be careful, because to stop trying to improve, or to just settle with being pleased with the current product, is to let creativity remain dormant. After all, a song is not a finished product. It may be recorded, but while it is being played, it is never completed, as rivers are never “done” flowing! So to just accept one’s ability as a musician is helpful, but to let ones nuances sit at idle would cause reversion; then doubt, and finally, retrogression, or stale music..
As contrary as it seems, stale music is, indeed, music; just as a heavy metal band is noisy to one person, yet inspiring to another. Now, when a musician has run out of ideas, he loses his followers, but more importantly, he no longer gets joy out of playing music. Just as when a spiritually seeking person has come to a stop, they no longer enjoy the exercise of searching. After all, searching is fun; mystery is what holds seekers in suspense. And those who have reached attainment still enjoy the activity of learning new things and find fulfillment in those activities which might be regarded as mundane or “old”. If a person comes to a stop, what they really have done is fallen victim to a crime that they alone have fabricated. If one stops, the river still flows; the puppy still plays, and blue is still “blue”, regardless if the blind man tastes blue or not!
After going through a long period of time when I figured that the more I wrote, the less meaning my words had, I stopped writing and began to read a lot. I looked for sanctuary and a revitalization in the books I read. I bought even more books. I was intrigued by so many ideas and was open to learn. But my main goal was to ascertain useful knowledge. Knowledge that would help me “get back on track”. I had created a victim of myself, in that I made the mistake of thinking that understanding more (through written word) would allow me to expand my perception. In other words, I read and studied with a goal in mind. Problem being- that which I studied was something un-intellectual, but I continued to store it using an intellectual’s habits. I read so much and understood so much that I came to the same juncture with my reading as I did after I had finished writing my book. To read any more would be to belabor the point, to venture farther from the truth.
So I stopped reading. Though I no longer actively read for study, I still continued to build my library with books which I intended to read some day. (That is, after I rid my mind of my Stoppage…) And it took separation from my intellectual approach to once again find peace. Drugs and alcohol bought me temporary moments of clarity- at first. But abuse of those amenities became a focus, as opposed to using them as supplements for experiencing life. Drugs can provide one with illusions, so one must affirm that those illusions are irrelevant- just as methods of building Chi and learning Forms in the martial arts might condition the body and the mind, but they, alone, do not ensure success in battle. All exercises, if to be deemed useful, are to be experienced, but not to be viewed as answers.
A door might be an opening, but one must pass through that door to benefit from what is on the other side. And after one has gone through the door, they do not carry that door along with them!
After a period of separation from the intellectual approach and the supplementing and abuse of certain drugs, I learned that neither were necessary. Indeed, they were enjoyable, but my study had always been beyond the human senses and the learning mind. The vastness of the galaxy and the intricate abilities of animals and their cooperative environment has always drawn me up into its syringe. Searching for that vein of perpetual energy and being aware of the innate power of that bloodstream has always intrigued me.
How does one get there even though they already are there? They are It. This is the contradiction. I want to be the Real Me; but I am not. I know this is impossible, but it feels guiltily true. As one knows under the influence of alcohol or a heavy drug, your perception of “me” and what the world thinks of “me” are momentarily not important. This contradiction alone, the fact that there is this contradiction, creates pain. To suffer from being the knower of this pain has become learned-natural for human beings. We know that this is not right, yet we still allow ourselves to be afflicted by it.
Along with my stoppage of reading, I wrote less and less to the point where I did not even consider anecdotes throughout my daily life. Beforehand, it had been second nature for me to start a writing in my head prompted by daily observances. But since I had not actively engaged in reading or writing, the designs of new writings were no longer a point of interest to me. I began to dabble in the martial arts (kung fu, mainly) and was entranced by the physical feats of the Shaolin monks, Bruce Lee and other martial artists- all of which have attributed philosophy as a deciding factor to one’s martial arts ability. I lacked the self discipline to thoroughly train myself, or even find a teacher; and therefore, my study of the martial arts was more from that of an onlooker, not a practitioner.
I could study the techniques, but I never physically applied those techniques. This allowed me to appreciate the movements, but I never fully understood them and (in turn,) had a limited ability to perform such techniques (if I was ever involved in actual battle). In damage to my ego, I watched the applications of the martial arts and could visualize them in my imagination, therefore had fooled myself to presume that, if the need should arise, I could defend myself using such visualizations and understandings.
To a muscle that has not lifted weights, lifting twenty pounds could seem rather strenuous. But for a muscle that has been trained repetitively, such an exercise brings physical satisfaction and also encourages the growth of new muscle. Just as getting struck in the face could be painful to some- to a practitioner who has been struck many times, and his face has been conditioned to receive such blows, being struck in the face could feel good, encourage growth, and give him motivation to fight- just as a broken limb starts to itch upon healing, and scar tissue tends to harden the area, it feels good to scratch the itch.
As my study of the martial arts was predominantly superficial, my scholastic and philosophical studies had become dormant and unfruitful. My main affliction was not my unproductiveness, but the attitude that living in such an unproductive way of was sufficient.
Though, indeed, such a Way was sufficient to survive, growth had stopped; learning had halted. Only two years earlier, intellectual growth had been an addiction. I thirsted for it, and my writing and reading had fulfilled my need for it. As a teenager, my philosophical studies kept me looking forward to the future. But at the time when I had lost interest in such activities, I no longer had a thirst. I no longer aspired to attain a higher conscious level. After realizing this affliction, my expectations of myself and the shame of not utilizing my interests presented stressful, ego-based thought patterns. Though my affirmation that I had already written everything that I needed to write was still apparent, I felt that reverting to verbose transcription was the only way to regain my once vibrant aspiration to learn and better myself. It must be disclaimed that this writing (what you are reading now) is not supposed to be negative or pessimistic; it is simply a synopsis of the rollercoaster of mind.
©2006 Chip Van Hassel