Illusion to Reality

hiding in this cage
of visible matter

is the invisible
lifebird

pay attention
to her

she is singing
your song

– Kabir –

I wake up each morning to a new day, except that there is nothing specifically new to each day. The daily chores of waking up, meals, work, relationship, bills, money, health, then back to sleep again – plagues my whole entire life as far as I can remember. Probably I would have less of these chores when I was a kid, but even that, the routine evolves around waking up, eat, play and back to sleep again.

I have never left any of the routine behind. I tried doing something different each day, but that something turns out to be just another perspective of the routine – different wrappers of the same stuff. Meeting new friends, going new places, taking up different hobbies, starting new venture, eating different food, playing different games – all evolves around the same theme – challenges motivated by boredom. I never see it as boredom in the past as I always thought it has something to do with my creativity, of wanting challenges, until I stopped and observed – in a very authentic way why am I continuously chasing – not what I am chasing but rather why the need to chase.

There’s nothing wrong with improving my life. There’s nothing wrong by doing new things. What is not right is when I don’t questioned intelligently my incessant need for change, my inability to be at peace with myself, ignorant to the fact that I am suffering silently.

We all have similar routine – what is different is our storyline, the drama that evolves around the routine. My drama may be different from yours but behind the facade of all these dramas, we are all doing the same old stuff – routines. I am like the bird in the cage or the fish in the bowl – seeing different things each day – oblivious to the fact that I am frustrated in my own trapped in my own prison of conditioning.

I look at the bird in the cage, forgetting that I am in another cage, albeit an unseen one. I am turning round and round the cage, wanting to be free, but I totally ignore my inner crying, my inner song, but instead occupying myself with newer and newer stuff, as a way to numb my pain – each experience a cry for freedom, a cry for love.

What is life if I don’t gain deeper understanding from these silent calling? What is life if I don’t question the repetitive upsets I am experiencing whenever I am being triggered? What is life if I don’t stop to ponder why the need for more which I am never satisfied? What is life if I don’t start seeking the meaning of all these repetitive cycle of conditioning that has and will never end until I start inquiring.

I am not sure about you, but for me, life is as dead when I don’t question the whole purpose of these incessant grasping, of wanting; and also not wanting to look deeper into my own dis-ease at this present moment. Why am I not ever peaceful, why am I restless?

When am I going to start looking inward, O Weary One….

I was feeling bored this afternoon doing nothing awaiting the arrival of the Lunar New Year. The mind just can’t accept doing nothing – just simply in the state of being – but instead wanting to do something to bring “usefulness” into the picture. For that it felt restless and irritated doing nothing. The mind just want to occupy itself, at least something it defines as useful so that it does not feel guilty doing nothing.

That is an incessant addictive mind of wanting to do something, all the time – the state of grasping as what the Buddha defined. Like a hamster on a treadmill, the journey of grasping has no meaning except meaninglessness. The addictive mind never see the benefit of simply being in the moment, making peace with the present. It has an ingrained idea that doing nothing is simply wasting of time. If I fall into its trap I will be unconsciously lead to do something unbeneficial, probably switching on the tv and watching something to occupy time. That too makes me feel guilty as it wanted to do something “beneficial”.

Simply being in the present moment with awareness, observing this addictive mind, in a non-doing state, is therapeutic and peace itself. The mind can be wanting to do something out of doing nothing – both are the opposite sides of the same coin – but so long as I am aware of it, I can just be with it, without identifying with it. The nature of the mind is constantly in doing. The nature of awareness is in being. The work of wisdom is to allow both to take place without fixing or stopping the incessant doing. Wisdom allows the dance to cease itself rather than trying to stop the dance. It is impossible to stop the dance of wanting as what it does is only inhibiting the force, not totally annihilating it, making the next arising even stronger.

There are moments where the mind defines boredom of doing nothing as meaningless. But wait a minute – it is not the true meaningless that is coming from the space of understanding or wisdom. It is a meaning the addictive mind gives to doing nothing and wanting to do more – and when it could not do further than that, it gives a meaning of meaningless. In other words, the meaningless is derived from “wasting time”. But that is simply an aversion to what is.

If I have not being clear in noticing it, I would have been tricked or lied into thinking I am observing from wisdom. Tricky eh? The path is laced with lots of imitation, of egoic pattern of trapping me in the incessant desire for existence – the addictive mind that is in constant state of withdrawal syndrome, the grasping state of wanting more and more.

There are two ways of viewing meaninglessness – either as a response or a reaction. Both have different result. Wisdom responds to the incessant wanting to do something, as meaningless. Whereas ego reacts to the doing nothing as meaningless – it is a meaning it gives to doing nothing, compelling me to do more. One work on the cause, the other effect. One comes from the space of peace, the other from the space of addiction.

Awareness with clear mindedness is key in differentiating both.

Today is Lunar New Year eve. Since I am a Chinese, “lunar new year” has a meaning to me. But it doesn’t bear any meaning to any other race. It is queer how being a chinese, the celebration becomes real. If I am born into a chinese family and do not look at all like any other chinese, and being adopted by another race, “lunar new year” doesn’t make any sense to me. Funny isn’t it?

Am I really really a “chinese” or is it simply a meaning the world gave me? I would not be called a chinese if I am adopted to a different family race. What has label got to do with my true beingness? But one thing is for sure – each label locks me into a separation from others. Each label is a meaning the world gave me and in return I give it to the world.

My name is a label, my gender is a label, my positioning in the family is also another label. Race, religion, citizen, marital status, career status, are each label that make specialness out of me. Even the “my”, “I” or “me” is the basic label that defines me different from anyone else. For that I am separated from each and everyone else. I am unique in that sense. But that uniquenesss is far from the truth.

At the bottom of all these forms are the same essence that you and me are carrying – experiences. Not the experiences of storylines and dramas, which are still in the level of form, but experiences of feelings and perceptions – joy, pain, upset, happiness, anguish, peace, jealousy, judgment, sadness and whatever that is. They are not new at all to you and me. My jealousy feeling is no different from your jealousy feeling. My anger is no different from your anger except probably in intensity.

My friend’s five year old child told her what it is like when she experience jealousy – it is not something new to the child, and there is no necessity to teach or explain what jealousy is – we are all ancient beings, going round and round in all these emotions.

So what is so different  from you and me? Do I have more happiness than you? Probably yes, for each emotion is dependent on how I give meaning to each form, in other words, my attachment to the experience. One dollar could mean differently to anyone. To a beggar, a one dollar experience is different from a rich guy. A trickle of water in a desert has a different meaning from a trickle of water from the tap. The meaning we put into each form is all our experiences of feelings.

Do I have more jealousy than you? Probably too, depending on my views of what I am experiencing. Thus all my own experiences has nothing to do with the world except the game of my own views and interpretations. Yes, I can be threatened by the world, but how I go through the experience is all I am.

My journey and your journey to earth is like entering a massive amusement park. In it there are lots of toys for me to experience. How I experience those stuff is different from how you experience it. The intensity of my feelings derived from each experience is dependent on the meaning I give to it. But yet I am narrowed down to three types of feelings – pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. That is all it is.

Stripped from all the facades of form and label, we are simply that. Why am I so serious with life? Aren’t we doing time on earth, or anywhere else for that matter, so long as this being call “I” is blinded by labels? Let me share with you here the first lesson from A Course in Miracle:

Lesson 1
Nothing I see in this room [on this street, from this window, in this place] means anything.