I am the Universe: 2012

"What is it like to live an awakened life?

While the world is trying to solve its problems and everyone around you is engaged in the same, you’re not. While everybody around you is trying to figure it out, trying to arrive, trying to “get there,” trying to be worthy, you’re not. While everyone thinks that awakening is a grand, noble, halo-enshrouded thing, for you it’s not. While everybody is running from this life right now, in this moment, to try to get there, you’re not. Where everybody has an argument with somebody else, mostly everybody else, starting with themselves, you don’t. Where everybody is so sure that happiness will come when something is different than it is now, you know that it won’t. When everybody else is looking to achieve the perfect state and hold on to it, you’re not."

What a beauty.

I just don't understand how one can subscribe to this non-sense that is a the discursive equivalent of a Chinese finger-lock. There is a certain kind of people who claim a cosmic understanding through a set of negative expressions. Let's look at it closer:

"What is it like to live an awakened life?"

From the beginning onwards, the suggestion is made that there is an awakened life versus a non-awakened life. Already the choice of word is burning to create a sense of inferiority among readers, who, baffled by the news of another kind of life, an awakening beyond the regular awakening, will probably understand themselves as un-awakened, living a less-than-full-life, missing out on something.

Indeed all those who may be trying to change situations (solve problems, looking forward to change), to change oneself (get "there", be worthy, running, looking for the perfect state)---most people really---are merely fooling themselves.

There is another life, we are told, a life where problems, arguments, self-issues seem to have vanished. This life sounds quite intriguing indeed and, let's be honest, a bit of rest wouldn't do harm, would it?

But wait, the message is quite clear: looking for change is the behaviour of the un-awakened. So somehow you have to change from one set of behaviour to another, without trying to change. So in short, there is nothing you can do. "Too bad, I've got sweets for you, but you can't have them, you'll have to wait until they come to you. In the meanwhile, you can watch me eating them."

But who is this awakened really?

The awakened, we are told, does not do anything, he (or she) does not try to change the world, nor himself. The awakened is clear: you cannot try to be like him, that would be foolishly sleepy of you. And if somehow awakening occurs to you, it may not be there for long, trying to keep it will only plunge you back into an un-awakened state. The awakened really is quite lucky: awakening happened to him---obviously he is also aware of the non-awakened life, so he must have experienced it as well, and has then seen change. It has happened to him and it sticks around. Effortlessly, this awakened is now living a life without worries and without problems, quite aloof from everything, the awakened is not special no, he is just not like "everyone around", not grand, not noble, just in a sort of permanent holiday.

But why does the awakened bother telling us about awakening then? Really if I'm not awakened, isn't it my problem? Are you perhaps, Mr Awakened, trying to solve my problem? Or are you just helping me trying to solve my problem? And what if I happily went about my problem-solving, enjoying my self-help courses, feeling a sense of dignity and fulfilment at working at myself and around me for the better, just because it makes me enjoy my life and live to the max? Suddenly Mr. Awakened comes to me and tells me I should feel silly about what I do. Yes, my life is low and vain: I am trying to solve problems, to figure it out. Now, instead, I need to figure out how not to figure out things, I need to try not to try, I need to become what I cannot become. I felt quite OK doing things but now I'm busy figuring out why I am doing them, effectively doing nothing, as you told me, but feeling crap I am not awakened. What are you doing to me Mr Awakened? What is your problem?

Yeah, let's talk about you Mr, why is it you don't want to face problems? What tells you that problems are somehow not worthy of existing? What if "problem" is just our cognitive interpretation of transformative processes you seem to refuse to undergo? It seems Mr. Awakened that only other people have a problem, the eternally recursive problem of having problems. But what is your problem with people who think they have a problem? Why is it you are preaching, writing and selling your awakening this way? After all you care not for the problems of the world right? After all there is no problem with me right? Could it be Mr. Awakened that the spiritual life you seem to claim for yourself, is not so much a spiritual process as a psychological process of self-denial? Could it be you are too scared of embracing the seeming singularity of your existence as a conscious being? Could it be Mr. Awakened that you would like to feel special?

And if it is not psychology then, perhaps you are using the old discourse of the priest calling blasphemy on everyone else, based on his self-proclaimed cosmic knowledge? Could it be that you are simply telling: "I am better than the common man and that common man cannot reach me, because he is the common man. And I am beyond the common man because heavens have willed me to see what you cannot see and what you cannot try to see, because your attempt to see is the ink of your eyes. I only can see, because I see what is to be seen. If you do not understand this, it is because you cannot see as I do."

Quite similarly, the awakened is much like the Brahmanical priestly elite oppressing the meek by inculcating fear among them. As I read once in a Dalit autobiography,¹ the kids did not enter the temple---Dalits are not allowed because of their Dalit status---out of fear the Gods would punish them.

If only they had entered and seen for themselves, how the Brahmins had lied to them.

If only the living would embrace their plight fully, if only the living were not feeling bad about feeling bad, if only they'd accept that life is a big question mark, with not only happiness and bliss, but also with pain, suffering, violence, then perhaps too, they'd see how the priests, the awakened, have lied.

¹ Baby Kamble, The Prisons We Broke, Orient Longam (2008).

You are looking for other things,
yet you hardly know what you are.

I am not looking for spells and tricks to tame life,
I am looking for the honesty to see it as what it is.

More important
than what you may find,
is where you are seeking from.

That light is the ultimate measure
to which space-time is bound,
may suggest all this is mere appearance.
To what does it all appear to?

Knowledge, meditation, experiences
will only get you that far.
What you are is all this,
and the string of being
holding them into existence.

I am experience in its entirety.

Digging,
Digging,
Digging,
Digging,
Digging with a golden shovel.

There was a time when
I thought I was too meditative
and not active enough.
There was a time when
I thought I was too active
and not meditative enough.

My Uncle

My uncle is a proud man.

We never really were fond of each other, but he is my uncle and I his nephew, and we respect each other as that, as a family.

My uncle is a proud man, who worked hard all his life to accumulate wealth and success, information and commodities, who acquired assets and insurances. He is a successful man, some would say.

My uncle is a proud man, who never really opened to others about himself, who talked very little with his own brothers--if at all--who married a loving and obliging wife, who refused to conceive children.

My uncle is a proud man, who has constructed a proud world around himself, a world of knowledge and information, a world of status, an organised world (one of the few who has an alphabetically organised cellar).

My uncle however, is dying. He suffers of senility and multiple cancers. His wife too, my aunt, is also affected by a cancer and both are now resting in separate hospitals. My uncle is not able to care for himself, and his dignity is now affected by his incapacity and by the services he requires from nurses. He has few relatives visiting him, his own wife is out of reach. His home, well ordered, is waiting for its master in order and silence.

I visited recently my uncle and in spite of the emotional distance between the two of us, I felt love and compassion for this man, who put so much effort in making things right, in doing well, in being successful in his life, in making things work. His work, his assets, his possessions, his knowledge, his dignity and pride are now of no use to him. He is a proud man: he has never turned to metaphysics, even less so to religion or spirituality. He is now laying anxious to die, he is terrified by what is to come, because he may not really have thought of it in other terms than as a deadline or as a remote event for which to prepare materially. I felt compassion for my proud uncle, about whom most think in negative term, because his pride made him harsh and coarse, never apologising. I see him now powerless in the face of Death.

My uncle's case got me thinking, not only about him, but also about me. What is true for him is true for me and most probably for anyone else. Whatever I will accomplish, it will be of little use in the face of Death. Whatever I obtain will not be with me when Death shall come. Whatever I learn will not be of much use when my time comes. Whatever memories I will have accumulated may just as well vanish in senility. However good or bad I may think I have been in my life, may make little or no difference in the end.

I have turned 30 recently and if I think of it, I was a small child playing silly things and daydreaming yesterday still. I am merely halfway to my uncle's stage. I am utterly engaged and open however, to embrace any way of life which makes it worthwhile to exist or to be this entity or construct we call "Benjamin".

The questions cannot help but emerge: is there a way of life that is worth our existence? My uncle's case already shows there is little to expect from any material or social success, because when death comes, those mean nothing, even more so when memory fades away. Should I be more kind? Should I bond with others? There is little or no help people can provide when death comes. Holding one's hand and few words of love perhaps, but words do little when you understand your life blinked away. Should I love more? Should I enjoy more? What are loving memories if they fade away in senility? What do memories mean if they do not survive after my mind and body return to the earth? What does life mean without "me"? Is there such a thing?

How should I live, so that when I too shall lay on my deathbed, will be proud to have lived and loved?