(Writing
to re-create myself amidst all possibilities when everything else has already
ceased being important.)
Opening
which happens inside, waiting to be filled with the presence of the Other
just outside of me. Is it you? Are you the one to commune with or is it yet
another play of images on the brain, senseless as always, with no meaning
whatsoever, just repeating empty words as they appear in the mind. But the
question remains, where do these words come from, just flowing through,
unstoppable, untamed free to roam, free to create inner constructions,
called and experienced as "Me" "I" "you" or
"my life".
Language flowing into the space created by the absence of the Other, the Lack,
the Void, the Emptiness, the Nothingness, the None, the Zero, words
filling the space inside, flowing through effortlessly, as if on its own. There
is an expenditure of some sort of energy fueling this flow, the eternal force of
life ungraspable by the mind, incomprehensible forever, yet experienced
moment after moment. Actually this language presence satiates the hunger of the
mind, the hunger of the self to be with someone to connect, togetherness.
The
God speaking through you, the God omnipresent, Buddha awaiting to be realized
inside of you, awakens inside even if already existing,
allowing the flow but how to make it meaningful, it almost happens before it
reaches the consciousness, it happens without me so what is it ?Your
presence outside of me detectable by the senses has to be translated into an
inner presence inside of the mind-brain.
Words
Love
- the mannerism of the privileged whereas all others have survival.
Hate
- stupidity of the masses.
Parenthood
- necessity of the old ages transformed into self-indulgent narcissistic
commercialism of contemporary North America.
Friendship
- two people trying to be decent for one another in the ocean of hatred.
Truth
- that which cannot be falsified at this moment and will be later.
Compassion
- a few warm words brighten the day.
Homelessness
- someone paying the price for the sins of others. Starvation - there are
too many of us.
Death
- final end to confusion.
Birth
- no-beginning celebrated as life.
Soul
- that which speaks uncorrupted. Dragged by hair and her heart, wounded
butterfly in search of happiness.
Mental
illness - a narcissistic rebellion against
the dictatorship of the masses.
On
Being - Something "is" only when it appears in the human mind, subject of reflection.
"Being", as we will ever know it, is created in the
mind but the mind is created within it.
On
Love - You enter love when you let yourself be overtaken by a person, idea or a
task. Something or someone is more important to you than yourself.
On
suffering - Suffering is possible because our nervous system can experience
pain. It does not, however means that that is why we suffer. Except for actual
physical damage to the tissue of our bodies suffering is an activation of the
pain system in the nervous system by our thoughts. Those thoughts are connected
to pain because in the past pain was accompanied by those thoughts.
What
is Self ?
The
Self usually begins as a random stream of sensory material -- sounds, images,
tactile sensations, scents, flavors, stimulate the nervous system and, through a
series of neurochemical processes affect the brain forming first impressions an
the brain tissue. The key aspect of it is its randomness, every one is exposed
to a different mosaic of impressions and everyone's nervous system react to them
differently due to infinite variations of the genetic material regulating
functioning of each person's nervous system.
So
these first random impressions constitute the mosaic-like core of one Self,
one's core-identity, the first filter/screen controlling the precursors of
mental (neurocognitive) functioning.
So,
at it's foundation the self is not other that the external world imposing itself
(IMPRINTING itself) on the brain, colonizing the innocent tissue by organizing it to
respond with internal images, sounds, voices, etc.
In
the second stage, there is the process of connecting that internal mosaic
imprinted on the brain to others in the world. Child's survival in the give and
take of social world depends on successful
development means to interact with others. The main means is language which
serves as the primary vehicle of articulating the self in the world and for the
world. Without it the growing individual becomes a deviant labeled retarded,
asocial , psychologically sick etc.
And
we are not approaching it on the level of psychology of cognition, perception,
representation or the inner workings of the psychoanalytic conscious/unconscious.
More
on self
Self
is the most recent result of all events and circumstances preceding this very
moment. Any description of the Self cannot refer it to any given, fixed number
of its antecedents. The Self as it is in this moments is always different from
the Self a few moments ago. Self can be described in many languages and
conceptual networks but they will always be partial and incomplete. What you are
today is a product of all events which occurred before. Physically you are what
you have eaten up till now. But there are also structural, slow-motion changes
which could be however seen if filmed with a slow speed camera, the same way as
we can see blooming of a flower accelerated to 10 seconds when it took maybe 2
days. So the structure is not static, it continues to change only slowly.
So since childhood you have been influenced by words, sights, events,
touch of people and events, registered in your mind in a process which will
eventually become your memory.
In
fact the mind itself began as an actual imprint on the nervous system (brain in
particular) of light, sound, touch, smell, taste andfrom the body. At some point those influences begin to
interconnect and form images, words (names) the senses. Later, they are assigned
linguistic labels (names) by the adult world and there is a gradual shift from
experiencing only to experiencing and naming/categorizing/describing which gives
birth to awareness, reflection, thought/ideation and the sense of Self/Me/I.
All
this is affected by your surroundings, land, people, architecture, which
fills and saturates your mind with images which come to lay foundation of the
most inner core of your self. But they in turn are results of countless
generations of people which now you begin to carry within yourself. So you are
the mountains and the rivers since the beginning of time. And of course
everybody gets a different portion of it so everybody is different yet made of
the same.
Just
sitting
Meditation
- just sitting
and
being aware of one's mind.
What
is being aware?
There
is this mind being aware of itself
and
there is this mind being aware of One Mind
There
is also just this mind....
just being aware......
and,
of course, there is just this mind..
just being......
Sometimes,
it is just being aware...
sometimes
it is just being..........
It
is being aware of what?
Or,
is it the "what" being aware?
What
is the "what"?...........
Ultimately
it is the "what" being aware of itself within this mind
and
being aware of no-mind
Being
Aware
Meditation
- just sitting and being aware of one's mind..........
But
tell me - what is being aware? And
show me - what is one mind?
Awareness:
being affected - reacting.
Ancient
calling and answering, since the beginingless origination.
As
a stone gets warm in the morning sun
flower
turns to its light
sleeping
animal wakes up
blind
man crosses a busy street
children
play in the garden.
It
is you conceived in the primordial ocean
of consciousness being aware of matter metamorphosing itself into life. Life
evolving into numberless entities
Is
it you being aware or is it
The
innermost layer of your mind never ceases being you.
Mind,
Meditation
and Awareness
There
are minds in the Mind, there are selves in the Self, there are individuals in
the transpersonal space we all inhabit. The individual minds are born and die
throughout space and in time. The Mind-Self remains unborn, un-extinguished,
timeless everywhere.
Mind-to-mind transmission occurs continuously among all of us, though only
the Enlightened can
clearly see it. Individual minds
are ceaselessly constructed from images, sounds, sensations imprinted on the
brain, individualized into (human) beings through language. The Mind recreating
itself re-minds itself through the minds which, in turn reflect back the so-called
"mirror" of the M/mind.
Individual
minds exist in the Mind, there is nothing outside of it, the Mind exists through
the minds and there is no Mind to talk about outside the transpersonal
collective of individual minds.
What
is it?...... reveals the "last word" of Zen. What "is" is? ,
though, has not yet been answered
by any of Zen Patriarchs. One can say that something "is" only if it
appears in the mind. If it does not appear in the mind we can not say whether it
"is" or "is not" since
we can not ask this question about something that has not appeared in the mind.
Meditation is the
basis of Buddhism. Meditation is sitting and being aware of one's mind. And it is not about this or that sitting
posture, this or that type of surrounding or ritual which are often reified in
many places. It is about "just sitting" and arriving at the right
realization and understanding. The key issue is what is it that is being aware,
or "who" is being aware. Another issue is, when being aware of one's
mind, what is one aware of? Provisionally, we can say that the one being aware
and the what one is aware of are exactly the same. Ultimately, however, even
that realization is incomplete.What is
awareness? What does it mean to be aware?
Awareness, in a most basic way, means being
affected by and reacting to. It is, fundamentally, an
action-reaction module of reality. It
means being affected by contact - reacting.
For a person
to become aware of anything, the object of awareness has to be first registered
by the senses. In order for that to happen, a form of transmission of energy has
to take place between the object and the sensory device (ear, eye, taste, smell,
tactile receptors). In the case of vision it is the light wave as it was
reflected by the object. Of course, what is reflected depends not only on the
object itself but also on the source of light, contrast, texture, position, etc.
, all well established within the cognitive science of perception. But we will
not go into it here today.
So back to
the transmission of energy. Light reaching the object is reflected by it. At
this point the "object" is encoded in the form of the characteristics
of the light wave. When the light falls on the sensory receptor its energy is
transformed into a sequence of biochemical/electrical impulses carried through
the visual path to the visual cortex part of the brain. Through a series of
pattern recognition steps a specific pattern of activation of brain cells is
constructed leading to the formation of a percept. When the intensity of
activation reaches certain level it is then "noticed" -
"recognized" by awareness and one becomes aware of the object in one's
consciousness.
It somewhat
similar for other senses. For hearing it is a sound wave generated by a
vibrating object. For taste and smell it is the particles of the object,
directly, reaching sensory nodes and initiating the biochemical transmission of
energy leading to perception and awareness.
So for an
awareness of an object to occur some sort of interaction has to take place
between the object of awareness and the subject of it. The first step is,
invariably, contact between the source of energy and its recipient. The second ,
it is formation of a precept in one's awareness. Step three is becoming conscious
of the precept and its integration with the cognitive system, recognition, naming, etc.
Is being
aware exclusive for human beings due to the fact we have our nervous systems and
the brains or is broader than the human kind. Are primates aware? Probably, even
if in a very different way than we are. They certainly recognize objects, have
memory, etc. They probably don't have some of our higher level abstract
functions and , of course do not have an ability to communicate in language. And
what about other animals - dogs, horses, dolphins -again they have their own
kind of awareness, not humans' but their own animal awareness. And also,
probably primate's awareness is different from dog's awareness. Moving down the evolutionary
chain we can extend the same reasoning all the way to the most simple organisms.
Yes , I believe they have a form of consciousness, remember, awareness is
reacting to contact. And they definitely react - to the environment, to light.
I also
believe that plants have their own- plant-awareness, responding to the direction
of sun -photo trophy.
And even
inanimate objects -stones, water, too
Psychological
aspect of meditation
Sitting
still
calming
the storm of hormones
dissolving
the armor of muscles
neurochemistry
of the brain and body is gradually changed.
