I cannot think.  Not that I have gone mental and lost my ability to think, but that my thoughts and feelings have abandoned me and left me deserted in a senseless and empty space. I have lost connection with myself. I feel like being evicted from within my own and not being able to get back in, however hard I try to spear into my own self I cannot. I try to get in touch with my thoughts and feel them, but they do not respond to me as if they are cold and dead. I am lost.

I cannot read. I do read and understand the meaning of the words and the sentences but cannot form a sensible comprehension of the whole idea that I am trying to grasp. Then I force myself to shut off all the doors to anxieties, thoughts and feelings of disturbed and chaotic nature in order to fully concentrate on what I am reading just to find all my senses and my mind deadened and unresponsive. I feel like a vacuum, empty and without any mass.

In the midst of all these I do feel one thing, it is of the nature of pain. Perhaps it is pain, though I m not confident and happy to call it pain. It doesn't hurt, it is like having been squeezed wholly to the fullest extent and left as a dead and muddled lump of confusion with no feelings but that of hopelessness. Perhaps my writings are a sublimation of this state of being. Ah hopelessness; how else can you be endured when there is no other choice but to be. It is indeed pain that truly exists, and we are to reify and manifest it. How beautifully Sartre calls it: Nausea.

I shouldn't call it hopelessness, as that might associate it with sadness and call for pity. It is closer to uncertainty and vagueness. By uncertainty I mean not knowing what is and what should be. And the wonder is what to do with this state of existence. It is where one is engulfed by awe and fear of realizing how delicate and subtle the distance between meaningful and meaningless is, just then to feel a cold sensation of how useless it is to have realized that. Whilst it is also learnt that this state of being is to be endured for an unknown length of time, be it on mere rational and ethical terms.

On Thinking

It is now well known that for thinking, itself being a conscious activity, there is an unconscious source which controls it and instructs it with directives. Whereas the wisdom of our age has been quite successful in discovering and refining thinking as a conscious activity; it has been not very well able to sufficiently appreciate the subtle unconscious origin of it.

Thinking is an innate and instinctive activity. It happens sometimes without our awareness. The most primitive form of thinking I believe is the mythical and imaginative type that everyone practices right from childhood, which is refined and at times sustained during the maturity of mind through to adulthood. The maturity of mind is a stage of continual development which is reached by the arousal of an awareness of mind towards its own operations and workings. This is a stage where the mind becomes self critical and starts examining the values and beliefs of truth it has been holding dear, often very naively. It is a painful process. The consequences of this self examination of mind might seem very devastating, specially if it was educated with an arrogant rigidity and provided for sustenance with a dogmatist worldview.

It appears that the essential purpose of human thinking is self discovery and self valuation. Thinking being instinctive, is initially stimulated and contained within our own self. We tend to think while having our own selves at the heart of this process, and therefore when we judge, we judge according to our own capacities. So for maturity of mind and for expanding its capacities it is important to let free our thoughts in favour of being objective, in order for our thinking to happen independently of our self. This requires training and disciplining the mind, which means resisting the mind's tendency to concentrate selfishly on its own sense of self. This cannot happen however by way of force.

What is important in the process of disciplining the mind is inflating it with knowledge, but what is also important meanwhile is developing one's own insights. This should be done with caution and modesty. One's understanding of a matter should not lead them to believe that they have the final say in that matter, as this violates the imperative that human knowledge is always imperfect and human understanding always limited.

Mind must be trained to think purposefully. It should always seek for productivity and creativity in its works. It must also be remembered however, that thinking alone does not contribute to the development of one's personality and their outlook. Albeit being the only potent tool, thinking does not always shape our actions and deeds. There is a long way from thinking to doing. But then again its only via thinking that this long way can be conquered and paved.

Samsara

“There are things we must unlearn, in order to learn them. And there are things we must own, in order to renounce them”; a quote from Pan Nalin’s film Samsara. Samsara is the endless cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth. In Buddhism it simply refers to rebirth.

 

In one of the beginning scenes of the film, the question “how can we stop a drop of water from ever drying?” is shown engraved onto a stone. At the end of the film the protagonist, after reaching a height in his spiritual journey, goes back to that stone and turns it upside down and finds the answer: “by dropping it in the sea.”

 

The film Samsara was a tremendous experience. I remember watching an equally powerful Korean film with a surprisingly similar theme a few years ago; it had the elegant title of “Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring”.

 

An evening at the Border's cafeteria

It’s a rainy Sunday evening. And I am sitting here in the cafeteria of borders bookshop in Rundle mall. As I am wondering what to write, I get overwhelmed with this feeling of intimacy as I see a mother feeding her baby.

I am trying to make up my mind on how to start writing my essay, and I wonder whether I’ll be able to write about what the empty feelings, the vacant chairs and tables communicate. Should I shift my observation to the conversations happening between people, and their behaviours that seem so strange when observed very closely?

The mother and her child keep diverting my attention. I find it hard to resist the temptation of engaging in a deeper and more thoughtful observation of this intimate relationship. As the baby holds tight to her mother and her mother reciprocates the affection, I can feel the peak of human self giving. I try to resist the harsh judgement of some who believe that this self sacrificing behaviour of human beings springs out of a deep selfish desire, as I don’t want to ruin the warmth of the moment. But I know the mother and her baby will leave the cafeteria soon and I’ll be left with unfulfilled emotions.

I see a young lady who is busy writing something. I wonder if she is doing an ethnographic observation too. It’s strange how I can still be unaware of my personal vicinity while trying hard to be fully conscious of the atmosphere. I get the thought of approaching her and discussing what she is doing, but I find it a big effort.

There is an elderly couple who sit facing one another, they haven’t talked much since I have come to the cafeteria. Both have been busy reading. And I can hear a quiet voice inside my mind urging me to go and ask them what they think of love. I’ve always tried to seek a perception of love in the relationship of such elderly couples who have lived together for long enough to have grown into each other and who have gained the wisdom to give a definition of love by their own experience of living together. And I have perceived a portrait of love in the silent communication between them which happens without the need for any words.

As I take a sip of my coffee I guess the time must have passed by more than one hour because my coffee has totally cooled down. I wish I had a cap for my cup of coffee, just as the young lady who is still busy writing has on top of her cup of coffee. But it’s too late now and I must get my things together and put them in my bag because the waitress is already cleaning up the café to close it down.

The clock shows 6 pm, while it’s still raining outside. And I have this strong feeling of walking in the rain; perhaps the cold and rainy weather outside might wash out this unfulfilled feeling.

My first post

The One remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven’s light forever shines, Earth’s shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments.

P B Shelly