Here's a funny little fragment:
Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.
Who wrote this? I think that nobody wrote it.
Have you ever had the sudden feeling, amounting to certainty, that life is, in actual fact, a dream? When the feeling comes, it all seems self-evident. The dream will pass, and when you wake up you will still be here, complete, at home, more fully yourself than while you are forgetful in the midst of your dream.
What is the epitome of this world's concrete sense of reality? The news, perhaps. Here are some excerpts from items that interest me, and that seem related. The first is from the late comedian Bill Hicks:
How about a positive LSD story? Wouldn't that be newsworthy, just for once? To base your decision on information rather than scare tactics and superstitions… and lies? I think it would be newsworthy:
"Today, a young man on acid realised that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration. That we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death, life is only a dream and we're the imagination of ourselves. Here's Tom with the weather."
The other extracts are from Eckhart Tolle's book, A New Earth:
When faced with a radical crisis, when the old way of being in the world, of interacting with each other and with the realm of nature doesn't work any more, when survival is threatened by seemingly insurmountable problems, an individual human – or a species – will either die or become extinct or rise above the limitations of their condition through an evolutionary leap. This is the state of humanity now, and this is its challenge.
The popular tabloid press does not primarily sell news but negative emotion – food for the pain-body. "Outrage" screams the three-inch headline, or "Bastards." The British tabloid press excels at this. They know that negative emotions sell far more papers than news does. There is a tendency in the news media in general, including television, to thrive on negative news. The worse things get, the more excited the presenters become, and often the negative excitement is generated by the media itself. Pain-bodies just love it.
We are in the midst of a momentous event in the evolution of human consciousness, but they won't be talking about it in the news tonight. On our planet, and perhaps simultaneously in many parts of our galaxy and beyond, consciousness is awakening from the dream of form. This does not mean all forms (the world) are going to dissolve, although quite a few almost certainly will. It means consciousness can now begin to create form without losing itself in it. It can remain conscious of itself, even while it creates and experiences form. Why should it continue to create and experience form? For the enjoyment of it. How does consciousness do that? Through awakened humans who have learned the meaning of awakened doing.
More good news here:http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/Story/0,,1723350,00.html
THE BUDDHA AND CATCH-22, Sámanera Bodhesako:http://www.geocities.com/Athens/9366/catch22.htm
Thanks. I haven’t read Catch-22, but from that essay, it sounds worthy of investigation.Prefacing my comments with the caveat that I am not enlightened, I should probably add that, although I’m very interested in Buddhism, I think there’s more to life than Buddhism. For me it’s just a little too small to encompass all of existence. It has about it the castrating nature of many universalistic religions. Thus all the mention of ‘sensuality’ as a bad thing. Asceticism, I think, is a way of existence, but not the only way. Hence, whatever the Buddha originally experienced or taught, Buddhism, as a religion (because it is a religion), is culturally bound. It’s interesting to note small differences in emphasis between religions/teachings. For instance, Eckhart Tolle, quoted above, although drawing heavily on Buddhism, uses the word ‘being’ a great deal, whereas Buddhism focuses on ‘non-being’. This is, of course, a mere question of words, but the language one chooses is, I think, a question of emphasis, and emphasis does make a difference. ‘Being’ suggests something closer to Hindu thought, as far as I am aware. It seems linked with the idea of Atman. Personally, I have more sympathy with such an idea than I do with much of Buddhist teaching, though, as I say, I think it’s a question of words and emphasis. The emphasis is Buddhism can be seen in many of its cultural manifestations, for instance, the fact that you have Buddhist funerals, but no Buddhist weddings. This is another reason why I think of it as somewhat ‘castrating’. For some reason, this tension between the engergies of life and the ascetic idealism of universalistic religion, seems to be expressed for me by Poe’s poem, Annabel Lee. I also find it in Momus’ song Little Lord Obedience. The whole of Mishima’s tetralogy The Sea of Fertility, one of my favourite pieces of literature, seems to revolve upon this and related themes. At one point the hero visits the grave of his friend and has a sense of emptiness that terrfies him. His friend, he realises, is not there. The implication in the story is that he has already reincarnated, and this reincarnation robs the dead and the living friend of their tragedy. Elsewhere, a Shinto priest curses the Buddha as ‘the rascal who stole our Japanese spirit’. Shinto, of course, is originally a form of animistic nature worship, which, again, like Hinduism, I find far more sympathetic than Buddhism as it is generally taught and espoused.I’ve been reading a great deal of Eckhart Tolle recently, and, though I am not entirely without reservation, my impression is that he is actually someone who has had what many call ‘the mystic experience’ and entered a state that others call ‘enlightenment’. That is very rare. Or it is so far in human history. Although it seems counter-intuitive to many people, I like to investigate the histories of teachings. For instance, I investigated the history of Buddhism to try and understand/evaluate it better. (I’m currently re-reading Tezuka Osamu’s Buddha, which is a rip-roaring epic, if ever there was one.) In the same way, I have read a number of articles about and interviews with Eckhart Tolle, and my impression is that, yes, he’s probably ‘enlightened’. If there is such a thing, then he’s probably it. If it’s something that is progressive, that is, not either/or, then I would say he’s there on a low rung of the enlightenment ladder. But what the fuck do I know? Anyway, here’s an article about him by a skeptic that I found interesting:http://www.inner-growth.info/power_of_now_tolle/eckhart_tolle_va_sun.htm
…although I will agree with his take on the vicious nature of the news. Time and again my radio bleats about some poor individual cruelly deprived of life or limbs, leaving his/her family destitute, pregnant, with seven children to feed. I am not exaggerating in the least, and this sort of sensationalist drivel does nothing to improve my commute or quicken my empathy. It does make me wish ill will on the newsreader, however…–M
Interesting article–I live very near Vancouver and I wasn’t aware of Tolle, although I’m not much motivated in a spiritual sense, being very firmly not enlightened and perhaps too thick to follow Tolle’s philosophy. In the Sun article he comes off as a well-meaning sort, harmless, perhaps–even, as you say, on his way to enlightenment, but the description of his lecture puts me in mind of the sort of high-mindedness privleged Victorians of a certain class were given to entertaining. But then again, I’m a depressing cynic too much in love with my own desires and habits. Your difficulties with Buddhism are similar to my own–I can’t separate life from desire or suffering, for that matter, and I have a rather Old-World Catholic inclination to believe we weren’t meant to experience unending bliss, not in this life (if there is anything other). Bliss and tranquility without suffering has no perspective, in my opinion. Besides, I quite like feeling wretched.But of course, that’s just me…–M
The first time I read one of Tolle’s books I hated it. I feel rather differently now. I think I really have had enough of depression (or at least, enough of it to appreciate the idea that there could be some way to live without it). I am actually trying to put into practice many of the ‘techniques’ described in his work. I don’t think he actually calls them ‘techniques’. As I said, although I have my reservations, and my mood changes, I am, at the moment, trying to be open minded. I think questioning things is good, but for myself and many other people it can also be an excuse to dismiss things and stick with what you’ve got. Then again, I’m probably in the catch-22 described in the article posted above. In the novel it’s that you can only get out of the war if you’re insane and ask to be classified insane. But if you ask to be classified insane, then you must be sane. With enlightenment, the catch-22 is that if you want to be enlightened, you won’t be, since ‘desire’, wanting to be something other than you are, is an unenlightened state. This idea crops up in The Neverending Story, too. I forget the hero’s name, but there a part where he has to get through a series of magic gates, and I believe the last one is a gate he can only get through if he doesn’t want to get through it. Eventually he succeeds, because he gets so frustrated he gives up.This is, in fact, what happened to the Buddha, more or less. He spent years in ascetic training, and even a kind of body-punishment form of training (I forget the correct term now), and it didn’t get him anywhere. So, he gave up and sat down under the linden tree, and he acheived enlightenment. Any old ‘giving up’ isn’t quite good enough. Some forms of giving up – like the kind I usually have – are full of resentment. But the kind that does the trick is what is often called ‘surrender’ – accepting things as they are totally.I tend to see the ‘quest’ for enlightenment then, in terms of a picture. You are sitting meditating outside a great gate. It looks like there are no doors, just the gateposts, but there is a forcefield there, blocking entry. The more you try to get through, the stronger the forcefield becomes. Only when you tune in to its frequency so that you no longer care exactly what happens, does the forcefield disappear. As Burroughs says, “How long does it take a man to learn that he does not, cannot, want what he wants?”In absolute terms, it does not matter whether one fails or succeeds. In the relative sense that the human race might destroy itself out of its sense of dissatisfaction, or even that the individual might live an unfulfilled life, it matters.Sorry to go off on one. It’s not like I’m in a position to teach anything. The above are simply the things that preoccupy me at the moment.
No, it’s a worthwhile subject. So enlightenment is rather like a fingertrap–it only works when you relax? Sorry, that was flippant. I like your analogy of a gate, as you mention Bastien discovered in The Neverending Story. I am certainly no one to criticize anyone’s quest for meaning. Some days it seems I’ve forsaken the quest altogether in favor of a lazy nihilism, although part of my awareness never will, and some days it seems the Universe has something vital that I need to understand and will purposefully bludgeon me over the head until I notice it.There are no easy answers, but then again, it helps to know the question…and I don’t…–M
Hello Melissa. I don’t actually know what a fingertrap is, but it sounds like that might even be a better analogy than my gate.I think the problem with most prepackaged spiritual paths is that they come with someone else’s dogma.I’ve just finished watching a film called What the Bleep Do We Know?. I’ll see if I can find a link for it. I don’t like the title, and the presentation is slightly corny in places (it’s a documentary framed within a sort of drama), but the basic information that it contains is, I think, very important for all of us to understand right now. Quantum physics came about early last century but most of us are still living in a Newtonian universe. That worldview must surely be at the point where it can’t be sustained any longer.Here’s that link.Similar information is also contained in a book called The Field.What a spiritual path, should be, I think, is one that leads you to the realisation that there are limitless possibilities, rather than one that narrows possibilities. The above sources (film and book) are relatively free of dogma, presenting scientific theory/research and so on, which is, of course, still an interpretation, therefore involving some possible latent dogma, but nonetheless, probably the best we have to go on at the moment.
i really enjoyed this line of questioning… do keep it up crisp.have you ever read the chuang tzu dilemma? i’m paraphrasing because my library is in storage…. but chuang tzu watches a butterfly identifying with a butterfly flitting around in the summer garden. he imagines what it’s like to be a butterfly so completely that he forgets himself and is the butterfly… then he has the thought… “how do i know i’m not a butterfly dreaming i’m a man?”that was 2500 years ago. like you said, “Quantum physics came about early last century but most of us are still living in a Newtonian universe. That worldview must surely be at the point where it can’t be sustained any longer.”what i think is that we need to evolve into a species which intuits time and it’s potential in a relative sense… to forget what we think we know about time and experiment more with the reality of the present moment and levels of consciousness. and especially how we spend our time.i love the metaphor of the gate. that’s exactly how it seems to work. you have to surrender fully to the moment of transport… anything else causes an obstacle. “winning without wanting” as i said in a poem i wrote once trying to explain what zen is. which of course is impossible.
Hello. Thanks for your comment. Yes, I know the butterfly story. Taoism is something that interests me greatly. I think you’re right about experimenting with present reality, too. In the end, life boils down to what you are experiencing. That’s not just sense experience, of course. Or rather, it’s important to be aware of the fact that there is not just experience itself, but an experiencer. I think being able to experiment is probably a matter of understanding the fact that the two are not one and the same (in a way, of course, they are, but this is where words always fail); the experience alone would not know itself.