Causal reactions and all-encompassing Buddha nature

This one is going to be a controversial blog to others as much as it will be to myself.

I was re-listening to a wonderful Alan Watts lecture tonight "Zen Bones" which ends with a Zen poem.

He who would understand the meaning of Buddha nature

must watch for the seasons 

and for causal relations. 

Every voice is the voice of Buddha, 

every form is the Buddha form.

I felt it, I knew it. So I wanted to test it.

I chose the most awful experience I could get my hands on. To make it my meditation tonight.

This is a video which has made me suffer above all sights, animals are my true weakness, my love for them goes past even the love for humans. So this is truly intolerable cruelty for me. It has made me cry, shout and scream in anger, awful extreme rage. 

It was different- to watch it. Absolutely different. What I ended up with was this realization.

My reaction is also a season, a causal reaction, also a Buddha form, just as the cruelty on display, just as the suffering on display. Whatever the reaction is.

The sadistic tendencies of those who suffer and cause suffering
vs my warrior spirit which has suffered and gone into a violent outburst against the sadists
vs a non-dual state of being which can watch cruelty at peace with an understanding it is all light Are they different in nature?

It is a controversial state for myself, that I find myself in. Me- who at one time had deep crises when I discovered the nature of the world and cruelty. Who had panic attacks at work when I had to sell foie gras as a special, and I couldn't do it- I said to my boss to fire me- but I wouldn't do it! Many panic attacks, many identity crises, not from being me, but from being a human being cause of all the animal cruelty I found out bit by bit... I didn't want to be part of a species who was capable of the worst. 

Yet slowly it balanced from seeing the whole struggle of us humans. Acceptance emerged of being in-between darkness and light. And then slowly the understanding came that light cannot exist without darkness. That there are really neither alone. Both of divine essence.

And now- I am here. Is it less unjust, less horrendous? No. And yes. The peace that I have in me now- I am still at a loss- what is this peace- I am with the poem, the essence of it, I know that the peace comes from that same source. But this meditation was unsettling- the peace itself disturbing- its a strange dichotomy. My mind tells me that, it tells me I shouldn't be at peace, remembering the past feelings. Of course my ego is part of this also- what- take away the main identity of who "I" am...? The main thing "I" am against? Whats the point when there is nothing to be against...?

I am guessing I am at a stepping stone from one state to another, polar opposite states. Unsettling to be at peace with something that was the deepest unsettlement! 

It is a meditation I chose which will still be difficult for some time.

But its good to grab the Bull by the Horns I feel.

Homeless and at home

I live in a big apartment block, but it is the roof of it that is my real home. I go to the roof to connect to the sky, when I have crossed the safety bar and am dangling my feet above the whole distance, but at the same time under the vista of the whole city and the sky- I am truly at home. On the border of it all I feel safe. This has always been my place.

So tonight I was making my way up there again. To my surprise the door to the roof was blocked by two homeless huddling in their sleeping bags. For a second I was unsure. Then I saw one of them open their eyes and look at me. At once my uncertainty disappeared, I smiled to him, stepped over both of them and pushed open the door.

Of course after taking my comfort seat between all things, with the lyrics blasting into my ears from my earphones "This city is for strangers as the sky is for the stars", I felt a tap on my shoulder, across the bar, and I shuddered, I had never been disturbed here. It was the homeless. He had awoken cause I think he was worried about me. Later he called me- "a crazy girl on the roof", I think he thought I had gone up there to the ledge with an intention. 

So I explained. He wasn't too sure. Till the end he kept asking me, "Are you in trouble, did you have a fight with your boyfriend?" etc etc. My answer that I was there cause I wanted to feel the joy just didn't compute till the end. He was a simple and straight-forward guy from Mongolia gone on tough times and I know I must have looked mad for him. He asked me why I wasn't scared when I saw two men sleeping in the hallway, wasn't I afraid they were dangerous. I answered, "I know that you are here to find comfort and warmth and a refuge, and I am here too to enjoy my refuge, so we are equal. I believe that people are good." 

He stayed beside me talking with me, telling me about the reasons he was homeless. I was at home, complete, and he was like an old friend, we talked about everything. No masks from the beginning, a soul meeting a soul- me at my most private place and him at his, as he would tell none of his friends of his troubles, his culture forbade that.
I gave him my last cigarette, and then brought him some soup and some wine. We kept talking. 

It was a wonderful night. The place where I go to be alone to enjoy the sky, was the sky as I knew it, even at a time I shared it with a homeless even if I haven't really shared it before, it was a hundred per cent natural, we were both sky people and I reveled in the truth of this. I have brought a few of my friends there yet it has been a social gathering and the sky has got side-tracked. Of course we all belong there. Insecurity and impermanence is the home of everyone, its just the openness to that that is rare to find. 

I finally convinced him to cross the bars and sit with me on the ledge. He held on to the bars and breathed hard, it was the same for me-my first time. I asked him how he felt. Didn't he feel free. But then I felt embarrassed- he was free. Totally and utterly free, without a home or a job, and perhaps I am mad that I admired his bravery to sneak into a random apartment block, perhaps I am mad that I admired his absolute freedom. He was more brave by far to keep his smile in his situation, I was merely home. 

We had a long talk about Mongolia, Ghengis Khan, Estonia, religion, politics, friends, you name it. 

I will never forget the humanity of this night. It is rare. And its a pity that the freedom between souls comes from these extreme moments so easily and harder in everyday connections.

He didn't understand till the end why I was there, in the cold, between sky and earth, for him- in danger. The only glimpse for him was when I said I wanted to feel the sky- he said his only idol Ghengis Khan was also a shaman, and if I believed in that-really? No matter the alien situation for both of us though- it was a night to understand what it is to be a human being.

What a beautiful night under the sky.

Compensation of ecstacy and anguish

From heaven to hell in a week. A week which seems like a month to my mind, which feels like a year to my body.

One week for the heart to fall in love and get itself broken to pieces.

I feel like I've been in a war, literally. So drained, not an ounce of anything left in my mind, heart or body. Just a knowledge that once again I've survived a hurricane.

What is left is silence. No opposites.

No desire.

No desperation.

No joy and no sadness. Pure emptiness.

Of course its so much nicer to get to the void by our own will, whether by letting go or meditation. But the madness that love and passion can be, the destruction it can do to us- will get you there as well. Crushed by my crush- but still ending up in the emptiness. Why not, I guess.

I also guess that the extreme passion I've just experienced perhaps has no other place to end. One extreme walks together with its counterpart. And the counterpart of passion is not heart-break- it's peace and complete stillness. From a point of view of how it feels- to be in love and to be in heart-break- doesn't really even have any difference. In its end it's still the same continuous heightened pulse, loss of appetite and sleep, obsessive thinking about only one person. Ok- so there is pain, where before was anticipation and longing- twins to my mind. Passion is perhaps just a form of pain, from beginning to end, and its certainly a type of madness. :) Where does it come from and why we have it from the first glances with some and thankfully very few... it's one of the great mysteries. I guess it has to exist in a world where the opposite also exists, in a world where most of the helloes already mean goodbyes. Passion is perhaps the epitome for this crazy world where we all drift by each other, rarely making connections.

Oh the hurricanes of the heart, the thunders of feeling!

When I sit right now on my balcony, and watch the sky, also silent at this moment, only one huge cloud suspended in stillness- I am at peace. I know that this is the true reality. Nothing is there to hurt us or to make us happy. We do this ourselves.
When for a change we are empty, our feelings silenced, our egos evaporated- everything is just there.

And its beautiful. It's all just there, we are just there.

Only a breathing.

Only some music.

And perhaps poetry...

Compensation- Emily Dickinson

For each ecstatic instant
We must an anguish pay
In keen and quivering ratio
To the ecstasy.

For each beloved hour
Sharp pittances of years,
Bitter contested farthings
And coffers heaped with tears.

The human experience, not escapism

Most people around me seem to have an almost identical dream these days. To leave and settle down somewhere in a simple quiet place, perhaps in Asia or South-America, but any place usually which is away from the manic rut-race we know and completely sheltered by nature. To run either a tiny business like a cafe or a little farm growing their own veggies. Some feature a commune, but generally the theme is- nature, peace, self-sufficiency, separation.

I used to dream of joining a nunnery of an eastern religion but neither my inner hedonist nor my inner individualist would allow it. So I adopted this dream also. Added a little river and a boat, reminiscent of the life of the boat-man from "Siddharta" :) - life seems peachy creamy indeed, paradise manifest, or so we may think.

Somehow most of my friends and myself have refrained from running away to buy their farms, and I do believe that its something more than the lack of resources, cause if there is a will there is a way and all of us keep fulfilling our other dreams. Yes we are totally overloaded in our lives of endless information and stress and separation from nature and it feels inherently wrong to live this way. I have experienced in my times away from the society that I am in constant peace, but for me there is a nagging thought- if peace would be constant, what would happen to the one thing that matters to me above all else- growth? If humans were meant to simply stay in bliss- would they still be human? Constant bliss does not seem to be a human state.

To be human for me means to learn and to know both the heavens and hells fully, totally, to be in-between, to feel the schism of our animal and spirit natures, to overcome duality, to overcome duality, to overcome duality- till, after time, we have become saturated with the state of human being and have reached the state of total non-duality, the heaven is always the same as hell and the lessons have all been learned. The human state for me is not a horrendous state of suffering either, it is what it is, and when we let it be that- we simply grow.

With this in mind, I prefer to be in the whirlwind of the modern society and the mad world. Some periods of time I might lose myself. I might get wrapped up and overwhelmed by the mundane, by tiredness, I might forget what I have remembered, but this is the hell for me now and as far as hells go- not too bad at all compared to what I remember hell can be and compared to the joys of coming back to the unity and peace and myself once more. Each time the remembering is just a tiny bit more stable and persistent.

With this in mind, I prefer to rise and fall in the winds like the birds, at times one with the wind, playfully sliding down a gust while sometimes shaken and stirred.
I gladly suffer the pains of yoga cause I know the pain means a deeper relaxation into the unity.

I prefer to be where I am even if its chaos at times. To live in the times I have chosen to live in. Fully. Regardless of what we all suffer with. I prefer to learn fast and to play out all my karma. And I am guessing that many of the people around me, even if its not conscious, feel the same.
I also do believe that we chose to be born now, and namely now, when the evolution of consciousness is happening more rapidly than ever. The dissatisfaction is part of that, the shadows calling forth the light.


I have no doubt in my mind that our human energy will eventually come to a state like in this scene, from one of my favourite movies "Waking Life".
I felt glimpses of that total readiness of moving on when I had my labour pains of the rapture of awareness, yet soon I saw that all of our human souls have many many stories to tell.
 


Some quotes from the master of telling the human story honestly- Hermann Hesse. "Gertrude" 1910

"That life is difficult, I have often bitterly realized. I now had further cause for serious reflection. Right up to the present I have never lost the feeling of contradiction that lies behind all knowledge. My life has been miserable and difficult, and yet to others, and sometimes to myself, it has seemed rich and wonderful. Man's life seems to me like a long, weary night that would be intolerable if there were not occasionally flashes of light, the sudden brightness of which is so comforting and wonderful, that the moments of their appearance cancel out and justify the years of darkness.

But there is good and reason in us, in human beings, with whom fortune plays, and we can be stronger than nature and fate, if only for a few hours. And we can draw close to one another in times of need, understand and love one another, and live to comfort each other. And sometimes, when the black depths are silent, we can do even more. We can then be gods for moments, stretch out a commanding hand and create things which were not there before and which, when they are created, continue to live without us.

We cannot evade life's course, but we can school ourselves to be superior to fortune and also to look unflinchingly upon the most painful things."