Home of the fumbler…

Siam Paragon was what it was always - busy, transactional and filled with Thais and tourists alike. As I walked by the new Mos burger outlet, I saw people standing in small groups all staring at a spot in the pond of white furniture. A woman was standing and tightly hugging a man who was seated at a table and in severe convulsions. They were obviously foreigners, Westerners. The man was spasming uncontrollably and the woman had her head down over his head which was buried into her stomach. She had her arms tightly wrapped around him almost like she was trying to love him out of his epileptic state.

I couldn’t do a thing, nobody could. This woman and her husband, boy friend, friend whatever he was - were completely alone and together in this sea of pitying, curious, horrified faces all staring intently at them. I couldn’t see her face but I know she was feeling a level of fear that can only come from loving him. She was probably knowledgeable about his condition as she had the poise of somebody who had dealt with this before but I know she was still fearful for him, for her, for their distance from the safe harbor of their home.

The man’s convulsions eased and a staff member brought a wheel chair. The woman helped the man into it and they left. Their sense of dignity was deeply affecting. My sense of helplessness was overwhelming, is overwhelming. I felt a tight pain in my chest twisting its way around my neck that spoke to my shame, in-equanimity and lack of understanding of my feelings.

I want to know that the man is alright, that they are used to this happening as a couple and this was just a rare recurrence of his condition, that he had perhaps forgotten to take his pills and that the woman was now laughingly scolding him for forgetting. I needed to know they were now kissing and this only made his love for this woman who obviously loved him stronger. I wanted to know the woman wasn’t feeling despair with having to deal with this and she would be there for him forever.

I desperately want her to be saying to him - this is our world, my dear and I would give anything up for this.

I have spent the last 2 weeks telling myself I need to find a good blog editor for the Mac before I can churn out my next highly fluid post. We all know what’s going on here…

I think i know what I want. I just don’t know if I have the will or the fortitude required. My desire to ordain as a monk has been strengthening over the last year and especially over the last six months. 

I am reading Phra Farang, an English monk’s autobiographical account of his journey into Dhamma (Buddhism) and experiences as a monk in Thailand. In the initial couple of chapters he talks about how he discovered Dhamma and how deeply he identified with it. When he talks about why he so strongly felt the pull, I found I was completing his sentences.

I am not starting as an outsider to Buddhism or Dhamma like Phra Peter. Born in India as a Hindu, the concept of Dhamma (or Dharma in Sanskrit) is something sewn into the fabric of my soul. I am going off on a tangent here but I cringe from labeling myself a Buddhist or a Hindu because before the concept of ‘religion’ was brought to India, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism or the hundreds of strains of Hinduism were all just paths to the same thing - living a life of Dhamma and ultimately attaining Nibbana/Nirvana as Buddhists termed it or Moksha as Hindus termed it - release from the cycle of life and death by gradually attaining higher levels of understanding and enlightenment by living the right life.

In ancient India and to a relatively lesser extent in modern India, thousands of ascetics and monks still endeavor to find their own paths to Nibbana. Some grow long hair, cover their skin in ashes and practice extreme yoga, some meditate in dense forests or in the icy Himalayas, some starve themselves, some believe that experiencing and accepting extreme physical pain (like the very stereotypical yogi sitting on a bed of nails) will help take the mind to a higher plane…it goes on. They are all trying to find their path to the same thing. There is no Hinduism or Buddhism in India - just a million paths to Dhamma - and you are free to discover your own.

The Buddha through intense experimentation, meditation and introspection discovered one such path - The Eight fold path that we call Buddhism today. But before he did, he tried almost all the methods prevalent at the time for many years but reached the conclusion (the hard way) that self mutilation, starving oneself or other such extreme measures did little to elevate the mind. He experimented, he tried and failed repeatedly and he did not hesitate to change his mind if he felt his previous conclusions were wrong. in fact, his most devoted followers repeatedly left his side because they felt he wasn’t consistent. He was the consummate scientist and did not arrive at his conclusions lightly.

As far back as I can remember, whenever I have brushed against the Buddha’s teachings or the man himself in my history lessons or in books or during those beautiful anecdotes from the Buddha’s life that my grandma, my parents or relatives would tell  us kids,  I was struck by the simplicity of the teachings and the humanity of the stories. While Hindu mythology is full of stories gods and goddesses each meant to symbolize and represent a value, a moral or a flaw - and are also magical and beautiful, it’s difficult to relate to them as intimately precisely because of that reason.  The Buddha never claimed to be anything more than human and the stories and anecdotes do not require a high level of suspension of belief.

Now, as I delve into the teachings and try to discover the path for myself, it evokes a very deep instinct in me - it is as if I have always known this is what I have always wanted but I just didn’t know it.
 
A reading of the Dhammapada or the biography of a monk or the teachings of an Ajahn (teacher) move me in a way that I have never experienced. I feel a tightness in my chest, a knot in my throat, a pull so intense that I might have termed it desire if that word wasn’t directly polar to the path of the Dhamma :).

Lest I get fanatical about following the Dhamma as is, the Buddha immediately forewarns against taking his or any other teacher’s words at face value and stresses the importance of questioning and discovering for oneself if any of the teachings or rules are indeed true and worthy of following. It is stressed by most Ajahns and the Buddha himself that one should only rely on a teacher for guidance and  better illumination of the path but discovering one’s path is left to oneself.

This post has meandered miles away from what I intended to write about - I know I want to ordain as a monk but I fear I don’t have the fortitude or mental strength to go through with it.  I want to ordain at least for a few months or years though my instinct is towards monkhood for the rest of my life.

But that’s such a big step no? Can I be actually thinking of it?  Why do I do about my lust? What about my parents or my sister or my niece? What about my irrational burning love for that one person who probably doesn’t deserve it? My passion for food? How do I give up my job? Can I give it all up? Can I go through with this?

Do I actually want to? Can I live without these wants and desires? One one hand, the need to give it all up and go head first into understand the path is so attractive and exciting that it makes me unreasonably excited just thinking about it. But am I romanticizing it? The life of a monk is not easy but in a way, it is easy because it is what I feel is right for me.

I have been wondering what happened to the passion I had for my job or the fire that technology lit in my mind or the love of travel? It’s all gone. And I am just 30! My friends speak with such passion and live their lives with a determination that reminds me of myself just a couple of years ago. But I am no longer passionate about the same things. I still love the good things in life, I buy the latest gadgets, travel extensively and am trying to look after my body. I am not even going to mention my err…passion for the opposite sex. But I honestly feel that I could just as easily live without them though it will be difficult to overcome I am sure. Their loss won’t burn me as it once would have. But perhaps most pointedly, I feel any depth of emotion or passion only when I think about the Dhamma and the possibility of devoting my life or atleast a few months or years of my life to understanding it.  And to think that the whole point of Dhamma is to get rid of this attachment to needs or wants or emotions :).

I have some thinking to do.

Tags: Dhamma, Monk, Dharma, Phra Farang, Buddhism, Hinduism

Been reading about this all day:

Nobel winner blames cultural decline on “blogging and blugging”

Almost everybody has ripped into her. I am torn between laying into her myself and well, holding it inside. Hmm, that last sentence pretty much encapsulates my views I guess :).

Is it fair to expect Nobel prize winners to not be idiots who feel the urge to shoot their mouths off about something they are not remotely familiar with? Look lady, you just won a Nobel for your ability to write. Stick with it - you won a prize and a neat bundle - you did not suddenly become the all-knowing goddess of all things. Pick up the cheque, go home, switch to premiere Darjeeling tea - you can afford it now and write some more books that will probably find their way onto Scribd or Google books and catch the eyes of millions more than the couple of thousand people who have probably read your books now.

And congratulations. To be fair, the rest of the speech was beautiful and inspiring.

Bear with me on this one. Don’t ask why I need to add a dose of moroseness to this normally happy happy blog ;).

It’s my message in a bottle of bytes - to that one person who warped time for me and then simply unwarned, unwarped it - the mouse to my frog. She might pick it up some day - nothing is lost on the internet just like the ocean.

It was always a song that made me loopy but now, it’s the script of the promise I make to myself -

Go melt back into the night, babe,
Everything inside is made of stone.
There’s nothing in here moving
An’ anyway I’m not alone.
You say you’re looking for someone
Who’ll pick you up each time you fall,
To gather flowers constantly
An’ to come each time you call,
A lover for your life an’ nothing more,
But it ain’t me, babe,
No, no, no, it ain’t me, babe,
It ain’t me you’re lookin’ for, babe.

~Bob Dylan: It Ain’t Me, Babe

True absolute dark terror is having to live in a community, a society, a country or a world where religion or other social norms have devolved to the extent that the helpless are punished for being helpless - as it has in Saudi Arabia.

A country where a rape victim is jailed for 6 months and given 200 lashes because she was alone with a man (man?) who then gang raped her with six of his buddies has given up all pretensions to morality - it has soaked up inhumanity to the extent that justice is no longer a recognizable noun.

What is wrong with these people? Generations have lived under an interpretation of a religion that has been passed through dark prisms repeatedly till all color is gone from any light that this religion once perhaps contained - but GBud, they still call it light!

They didn’t stop there though. They called the wretched soul an adulteress…for getting raped!

The pain this woman must be going through…how will she ever gain peace again, GBud? Will she ever know it’s not her fault, will she ever know that she has to live through this but it *will* end, that her suffering is impermanent, that this is but a moment? If she doesn’t, if nobody speaks this into her ears - her world will kill her and then decry her to death for the crime of murder.

What is it about frogs that inspires? And what is it about writing that convolutes my thoughts? And what is it about concentration that I cannot hold on to? Where are the love handles of concentration? I’m groping here.Let’s start from the beginning. What is it about frogs that inspires? Zen masters to Rumi to The Buddha himself have built a world of metaphors around the amphibian that the French relish on their dinner plates. Why do I have to try to be funny? Why is it so important to me?

The Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh uses froglessness as a metaphor for mindfulness (See my previous post)

The first step in anything is to achieve froglessness. Hmm…

Rumi…oh Rumi….this beautiful man knew a thing or two about living Dharma without knowing it. And he seemed to relish frogs more than the French - just not on his plate.

Take his poem Intimacy.

Do you see what I mean? And that’s just a glimpse of a frogful Rumism. There are verses filled with frogs - a frog who is attached to a mouse - and a mouse who is attached to a frog. Sounds familiar?

Rumi, I am your frog. I am your frog who has one leg tied to a rope that binds him to the mouse on the shore. Except the mouse and the frog were more than friends. When I try to dive into my pond, that rope yanks me back when I least expect it. And I expect it all the time. And why do I think of the pond as my pond? Weren’t you in my pond once? And who is this ‘you’? Rumi, I am beginning to write like you - the first person, the second and the third all inhabit my thoughts at the same time - and I jump between them. I jump from you to me to my mouse with the alacrity of Thich Nhat Hanh’s frog.

Whom am I writing for? I read what I just wrote and it would not make sense to anybody but me. But how do I know that? And what is it about writing that convolutes the confident binary charge that was traveling a synapse in my brain just now - a moment ago? Which nerve is it between my brain and my fingers that diverts my thoughts into….my neck perhaps? It has to be the neck because my neck hurts. It hurts more as I get more froggy. And my thoughts get more foggy as I get more froggy.

The mouse told me she misses me like a child misses a blanket. What does that even mean? Life is more than a lyric from a Fergie tune. And why does she want me to know that - after all that she has put me through? Doesn’t she know that the rope she tied so carefully already hurts enough as I try to pull away and as it digs into my fragile frog leg? Do I need more?

You’re still alive she said…is that the question? If so, if so, who answers? Who answers??
—-

Gill Fronsdal says that he discovered that when you begin writing a sentence, you don’t need to know how the sentence is going to end. It’s the most beautiful thing the frog has heard in a while…It makes him feel less of a hack. Make no mistake, he is a hack. He just feels less of one now.
—-
The frog recognizes he doesn’t understand himself anymore - what he is doing, where he is going and where he will end up. He has come full circle - except that he didn’t want to. He started off feeling a nomad and he has ended the circle confirmed a nomad. He had found a home with the mouse and he had built the proverbial castle with her as his home. He believed that home would always be there.

The castle never existed and it’s disappearance pains the frog enough - tinge more than enough actually. But the home is gone too. That sends his leg muscles into a frenzied twitch. He jumps around all day from this pond to the next and sometimes catches a glimpse of what he thinks is his home..was his home. But he doesn’t understand - that hole can’t be his home. He recognizes it but surely he is mistaken. It looks like his home but it is darker, more of a hole than he remembers - it doesn’t look like a frog ever could have lived there. So he jumps around a little more.

Rumi, this frog should have known better than to look for happiness in a mouse hole.

He is getting a little worried as the sun sets…is he going to be doing this tonight …days, months…..years?? Can his legs take it? He wants to go home desperately but the question of whether it ever existed is now nagging at the peripheries of his little brain. Did he imagine it? Wish it into existence? Think frog - the thought of a frog and mouse together is…well, ridiculous. But the mouse…she was so real, her eyes were so real, her soul was so real, her squeaks was ethereal, her short tongue seemed longer somehow…like his own and…she promised to keep home for him. That couldn’t have all been just been him. But then where is home? WHERE IS HOME?

Can frogs cry? Well, your frog apparently is capable of thinking, trusting and memories - so why can’t he cry? It’s a small leap of faith. Hehe…leap…frog…get it?

The frog rests for a while. He is so tired. Sad. He cringes. He is not allowed to be sad. His thoughts wander away from the mouse for a bit and he muses that he is not a toad but he is no prince either. He never believed in that cliche and he still winces at what he is writing. Did he have to bring up the frog and prince reference? I mean…was that absolutely necessary?

Hey frog-man, forget about it..let it be…just keep writing. Didn’t you just say you were ecstatic about what Fronsdal discovered for himself? It was your inner cliche coming out…that’s all - you didn’t see it coming. Let them spew forth, green one…you will run out of them sooner or later and then it will be all elegant previously unimagined metaphors….I promise.

So, back to the frog who is not a toad and not a prince. The frog is a frog. He knows it. He doesn’t want a bigger pond, he doesn’t want the insect population to go up…he certainly doesn’t want to be kissed (cliche alert) by a princess or turn into a prince in a story that conveniently ends exactly when he turns into a prince…nobody ever *ever* goes into how the story ends. Happily ever after my *^^.

He doesn’t understand himself anymore but he knows what he wants. He wants to be content with himself, wants to get himself to see the virtues of forgiving the mouse, wants to understand his longing for her and then give it up…he wants to see the end of his suffering and wants to stop his wanting. He knows his wanting, his

It is evident, the frog sees the path but he is suffering - acutely. Too acutely to stay concentrated on the path.

Suddenly, his leg muscles relax…he almost misses his own thought - there is no home…there is *NO* home. He knows it’s time for froglessness.

His leg muscles begin a slow twitch again. How does a frog become frogless?

If you are a Dhamma (Dharma) practitioner or even a Vipassana meditation practitioner, the meaning of froglessness will be evident.

When a frog is put
on the center of a plate,
she will jump out of the plate
after just a few seconds.

If you put the frog back again
on the center of the plate,
she will again jump out.

You have so many plans.
There is something you want to become.
Therefore you always want to make a leap,
a leap forward.

It is difficult to keep the frog still
on the center of the plate.
You and I both have Buddha Nature in us.
This is encouraging, but you and I
both have Frog Nature in us.

That is why
the first attainment of the practice–
froglessness is its name.

- Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese monk (Zen) and poet.

This coral’s shape echoes the hand
It hollowed. Its
Immediate absence is heavy. As pumice,
As your breast in my cupped palm.

Sea-cold, its nipple rasps like sand,
Its pores, like yours, shone with salt sweat.

Bodies in absence displace their weight,
And your smooth body, like none other,

Creates an exact absence like this stoneSet on a table with a whitening rack

Of souvenirs. It dares my hand
To claim what lovers’ hands have never known:

The nature of the body of another.

Sometimes you read something that you would never be able to write but is exactly what you wish the talent to be able to articulate.

A mouse and a frog meet every morning on the riverbank.

They sit in a nook of the ground and talk.

Each morning, the second they see each other, they open easily, telling stories and dreams and secrets, empty of any fear or suspicious holding back.

To watch, and listen to those two is to understand how, as it’s written, sometimes when two beings come together, Christ becomes visible.

The mouse starts laughing out a story he hasn’t thought of in five years, and the telling might take five years!

There’s no blocking the speech flow-river-running-all-carrying momentum that true intimacy is. Bitterness doesn’t have a chance with those two.

The God-messenger, Khidr, touches a roasted fish. It leaps off the grill back into the water.

Friend sits by Friend, and the tablets appear. They read the mysteries off each others foreheads.

But one day the mouse complains,

“There are times when I want conversation and you’re out in the water, jumping around where you can’t hear me.

We meet at this appointed time, but the text says, Lovers pray constantly. Once a day, once a week, five times an hour, is not enough. Fish like we need the ocean around us!”

Do camel bells say, “Let’s meet back here Thursday night?” Ridiculous! They jingle together continuously, talking while the camel walks.

Do you pay regular visits to yourself? Don’t argue or answer rationally.

Let us die, and dying, reply.

~ Rumi

(From The Essential Rumi translated by Coleman Barks)