Only to Realize

  • The river water
  • knows not the sea
  • arriving
  • merging
  • unknowingly
    • from where it was
    • where it is
    • to where it will be
    • water
    • was never separated
    • not even once
    • except meanings
    • of river
    • of sea
    • seemingly separated
  • where then is
  • beginning or end
  • except by meanings
  • of movement
  • of time
  • of hierarchy
    • for water
    • be it beginning
    • be it river
    • be it sea
    • be it ending
    • unseparated
    • never left
    • never gone
    • never begun
  • as vapor
  • as liquid
  • as ice
  • different in form
  • yet same
    • only concepts
    • of river
    • of sea
    • separates
    • yet water never was
  • the world
  • of humans
  • and others
  • only in form
  • seemingly separated
  • yet never was
    • two realities running
    • in parallel
    • intertwined
    • seemingly in opposite with another
    • yet both in one
    • except
    • to Wake up to each
    • one reality the other concept
  • nothing to reach
  • nothing to arrive
  • nothing to get
  • nothing to end
  • except to Realize

 

God and you was never something to arrive at, nor was it something to attain, though both meanings are frequently used to point towards a specific goal. It is a matter of waking up to a realization that in reality, nothing really happened except meanings conjured by the mind which leads to the illusionary separation.  You, the metaphor of a river is like trying to reach God, the ocean, yet both can never meet – the river and ocean are mere meanings. Can “you” then meet “God”? Yet, like water, a meeting has, will and always, been happening, except to wake up to that reality. What is stopping you is that you have yet to realize. To arrive at this realisation, the “you” have to die along with the meaning “God”, just as the meaning of river and the sea has to be put aside for water to be thoroughly seen. Only then, “God” can be realised without a name on it.

What is Life but another Story

library

Your life is your story, and my life, my story. If by chance, yours and my story meets, another story comes to be. In this new found story, elements of each our own stories intertwine with one another, producing either a happy story or a sad one. Though there seems to be only one story from our meeting, a melting pot of both our stories, yet that story was never outside of us, except in each of us, as separate stories. There is a meet, a communication, and there is no doubt about that, yet there was never once a story that has been produced between both of us, for there was never a between, except our own storylines about it.

Even if we do not meet or, have not met, our non-meeting churns out yet another story, except unknown, untold. Whether there is a meeting or not, a story is constantly been unravelled. It may be called a story of “if only we have met earlier” or “if only we have not met”, yet both are already in the process of a story unfolding. Irrelevant whether we meet by eye contact, by a call, by physical intimacy, or by story churned out by another, each produces a new storyline, of its own.

Each story we have with someone or something, somewhat produce a tapestry of connections to our already written stories in our mind. There is no one story we connect that is not related to us, even if we think it is not relevant at all. Isn’t irrelevancy another story? No matter how we avoid, or shun, or keep mum, or participate, a story is made out of it. Etched in our mental library, each story defines our next course of perception. And it seems our future is invariably predictable, by the story we buy or not buy into.

There are stories that reinforce our already existing stories. There are stories that add a twist to our suspicious tales. There are stories that we think is worth spreading. There are stories we feel like keeping only to ourselves. There are stories that make us feel hurt. There are stories that make us feel great. There are stories that make us feel invisible. There are stories that make us feel incomplete, or complete. There are also guilty stories and fearful ones. Indeed many are our stories. If ever it were to be compiled and written, it may probably have occupied the entire space on earth.

Who on earth will read our stories? Aren’t we all story lovers? Or else movies would not have been created, or songs sang. Yet, unbeknownst, those who read another becomes their own. The news we read, the Facebook we interact, the mails we received – chunks and chunks of stories enter our heads. From a life of simplicity, we are beings of complexity, only of storylines.

The world is filled with stories, not histories. Yet, those stories are not found outside in the world except in each person’s mind. We are all a walking storyteller, storytelling ourselves to define each day. And when the day is over, another story unfolds, in another reality where I call it a dream, upon waking up from it.

What is life, but an unfoldment of stories? Which story is more real than another? Or is there any reality at all? I am certain when one finally wakes up from it all, probably these hundreds and thousands, and millions of stories will suddenly become meaningless. What is left then?

The Change You Want is not the Change that is Truly Needed

Today, just like any other day, passed by quickly. Within my own observation, each day is no different than any other day of habitual-beforehand-attention – ignoring what is only real here in each moment, unnoticed and gone – in exchange for another beforehand imaginative moment of what should lie ahead. I can be deeply obsessed in what I am doing, yet in between lines are spells of trepidations or anticipations of what is to come. Things are not done for no reason, but in the hope of a future return which is dear to my heart and very much connected to past experiences of which I do or do not want to experience again.

Life is just that, a meaninglessly repeating cycle of what the past has taught me to handle. I may wish for a drastic change – a change that will hopefully redefine my future – yet the change I want must be something connected to the past; else the meaning of change will not arise at all.

If my past is haunted by unfairness, all I want is justice for equality. Yet, it is not equality that I wish to have but rather justice done for a past that I am unable to forgive as to put me at ease of that appalling experience of unfairness. By making others pay the price for what I once suffered, my perceived equality comes to be.

Similarly, if my past is haunted by my need to re-experience again, I will go all out to make it happen, as to justify my need for it. Whichever or whatever way I heed, I am merely playing justice to my needs.

What is justice but guilt replaying itself? It does not matter whether it is on someone or towards oneself as long as guilt is being ‘done’. Until this is clearly seen and realised, guilt runs the theme. Our minds are run by guilt. The playout in relationships, corporations and countries are not any different. Those who oppose are similarly, doing the same. Whence is fairness? Whence is change?

Where guilt is approved, its result will be guilt orientated. It never ends except a vicious cycle of guilt ridden outcomes. This is the path of the known world; rarely is Love introduced, bringing forth a truer means of forgiveness as an antidote to guilt. Forgiveness releases, guilt condemns. In guilt, wrongness is seen. In forgiveness, error is realised. Fear, guilt and shame is in our blood, universally. The only change worth changing is not what is separated from us but rather what is within each of us. Only then a new world is possible. It begins here in the Now.

“Few among men are those who cross to the other shore. The rest, the bulk of men, only run up and down on the hither shore.”- Dhammapada 85