Dear Friend,
Why has this society we live in has become so corrupted, so ugly a place that it is extremely hard to live a secured, stress-less, painless, conflict-less life? If we are the background and there’s no escape from the society too why don’t I also try to understand the myriad ways and the complex system that control all aspects of our life? We can’t withdraw from the present existing socio-economic structure, from this consumer society its so-called democratic set-up. Whole of our relationship is around these conditioning factors. So it’s a must that we understand ourselves and the set-up and endeavor to change this culture.
We have lost all our sense of what it is to be sane, silent, beautiful within. So we don’t know what is Beauty outside, the order. Even we don’t have time to think about it, nor about anything but the things we are forced to behave within. We cannot stop just now and look back, look at what we are really doing, because we know if we stop a while the rest around us win the competition and we lose our pace. In the school, in the university we postponed our life, to live a better life in the future when we have a good job with a good salary and one’s own family. But even with all that we are not ready to live, we are not patient, nor we have time to look at. And thus we have lost all sense of Beauty and Love.
We have become so insensitive, fed up, bored, shallow, dull, engaged, occupied that we don’t even feel anything, that we don’t have emotions. So we are petrified. Do we really feel lonely, sad, unfulfilled, lacking, deeply happy?
We have learnt everything since our birth, but have we learnt to love? Is love intrinsic in us? Do I really love my fiancé, my spouse? How have I learnt the way I love my beloved? What kind of culture of love has conditioned me to behave the way I do? Then what is and what should be the perfect relationship between me and my beloved?
So is it not of utmost necessity at this moment of global culture to have discourses all around what we are, what we do and the possibility of a culture of Love in relationship? In these studies the Context is what is always referred and we have no boundaries as to the frames of theories in the observation of what is truth as truth and false as false.
Unless you endeavor to change this chaos you cease to love. The endeavor is by discourse which leads to instant Wisdom and its promulgation, communication. Within the various possibilities and combinations of Being what keeps man away from violence, conflict, destruction is Love, a sense of Beauty. And this endeavor is simply because it is of utmost necessity for man to be a Work of Art.
Calling for Awakening
You, my friend of the Globe, this earth of Love and Beauty. This is my calling for you to awake, for we have been insane, sleeping in a dream of violence for millennia. This is my calling for you to bloom with the flowers, for we have ever been fading. This is my calling for you to the glorious revolution, to open your eyes at that extraordinary phenomenon of the Thunderbolt that enlightens for you to look around, at the very moment of dire darkness. It's my calling for you to the great adventure in to life, which is absolutely hazardous, vulnerable, serious, creative, inventive, exploratory, unpredictable, unknown.
Come my dearest friend; see how tremendously glorious is that valley of flowers where buds bloom into flowers, beside those greenly pastures along which the crystal waters of the stream flows over Stones and pebbles, kissing the earth with its cooling breath. Warming sunbeams are falling from heaven above the lake that reflects the majesty over and about. The last rains have washed the leaves, the trees and the grass, that they arise alive, afresh, naive, soothing. Those huge range of mountains in blue tell the story of the earth when a lonely cloud light as feathers hovers above a peek. There, over the vast ocean the sun is setting, its vale of rays spreading a stretch of golden light. At one place of the earth, birds are flying towards their nests; at another place they are flying from the nests. The monsoon rain is lashing down on the forest and meadow and crest. The bison in the Prairies, alone, unaware of this, silent, still is bathing in that exquisite downpour of rains. Everywhere life in its magnificent forms is manifest.
There a mother was milking her child; the child, so satisfied, fulfilled, began smiling in his dreams. The mother was contended and her heart was throbbing with happiness ineffable that burst into tears, while looking at the lovely smiling countenance. There in the park lovers in their world, passion, and hopes filled in their hearts. A poor boy is driving his cart, his little sister cuddling her doll so dearly. You hear the village youth having a usual night ballot, dance and singing. There you find one playing games in and talking to the computer, and a scientist trying to solve, discover an unsolved, undiscovered, problem, mystery. The mathematician who is exploring into the realm of logical frames in many a dimension; there the strain, boredom, hopes and fears of the student who is awake all night trying to get through his exam and not having a single moment to see the glory of that starry night of the crescent; those educationists trying to find out effective ways of teaching and learning; there the professors and the elite who have dozens of colors added to their names as tags, and who write hundreds of research and social reform papers; there the masters in meditation centers helping the seekers to achieve peace of mind and noblest spiritual states; there a musician composing a masterpiece of music in Beauty; the frustration, desperations, endeavors of a poor father sweating to earn his daily bread for his starving young; there the office worker working like a machine all day long and during all his life with bitter monotony and dullness; there the sorrows and pains of a wife who has lost her husband, of a lover who has lost and been separated from his beloved; there the tears of a mother who witnesses her only child being carried away by an armed group; a prostitute there strangling her useless child, desperate, treacherous ;a client waiting for her to quench his thirst. There a novelist writing an enchanting bestseller story that fascinates a million of readers, and singers, film-directors making big-hits. There the politicians, the philosophers, organizations, with their own dogma, the religious people trying to revolt and change the society with their stagnating theories.
That is the diversity of living going around me every nook and corner of the globe.
Who am I and what is my position among all these vicissitudes of life that I am experiencing all around? What is my relationship to all these? What is my relationship to those blooming buds in the fields, the waters in the stream, the golden vale of rays on the sea at the sunset, the thick fog and the mist that have covered those blue hills, the lonely tree in its magnificence standing on a meadow? What is my relationship to the leopard trying to pounce at the deer drinking water from the lake, the bison on the Prairies, the hawk that hovers along a pathless path in the space, and to the blue whale flirting in the deep blue sea? What is my relationship to the mother who is bursting into tears once in bliss inexpressive, and once in unbearable sorrow, and to that begging woman carrying an infant in the street? What is my relationship to that father who pours wine to a glass at his dear daughter’s birthday ceremony, and to the man trying to attain a higher position in the social hierarchy? What is my relationship to all these people and their varied sorrows and pains, fears, conflicts, and frustrations, and to their happiness and joy?
Is it not necessary that we ask from ourselves- if we are a little bit serious to question is whether we are living the perfect kind of life. How can I exist without knowing it, without knowing who I am, without finding myself, what my Identity is? Am I an identity that embodies its own uniqueness in this universe? What is the identity that I have recognized as myself, and how do I know that I am really living, that I have a unique existence on this earth? What makes me separate from, unique among all others? Here I am now and how did this moment come into being- this moment with its entire vicissitudes going on around? Then I ask, am I separate from all those phenomena, the vicissitudes, varieties, sufferings and happiness of those men and women? Do they have separate intentions, motives, likes, hopes, preferences, thoughts, feelings, ideals that I don’t have? Does the other have problems that I don’t have, that I have never confronted and would never find a place in me? Are those problems, conflicts, the wars the violence going all around separate from me? Am I separate from that suicide bomber who dies with many others, and the one who hangs himself? Am I separate from that great musician and the monk who has avoided all social interaction to reach a goal? Why do I feel I am separate from all these and what has made this immense gap between me and the other, that I feel I have no access and don't want to have any to the Other?
Really am I sensitive enough to see all these around me, in home, office in the collage, the university, on the road, the beach, the hill, the village, the city and in the vehicle? Or am I so shallow, so empty, superficial, dull, engaged, occupied, that I don’t see these or I don’ want to see? And after all are these questions really valid or are they mere nonsense? Because I am questioning now, because I am finding all these around me and within me , because I feel all these in my blood in my bones and in my flesh, must there be not the understanding that these questions are valid in this world of reality that matters?
So, it’s a fact that that whole chaos within and without man has been the continuance for thousands of years. He has ever failed to understand that I am the other; on the contrary he has ever tried to build himself, continue himself killing the other, overpowering the other. How can I be separate from the other, for because of the other am I? Then understanding all these, do I see that a fundamental change in whole of man's existence is compulsory?
The change is the Revolution beyond all boundaries of evolution, reformation, adjustment. And that Revolution is in Finding Ourselves, finding our Identity, uniqueness in the now, and nothing else, for nothing else would answer the problem, the chaos, dilemma of man’s existence on earth.
Civilization, religions have greatly influenced man by the idea that suffering, pain is so intrinsic, karmic and that this is the inevitable fate of man who is doomed in Samsara. So they never dare to look at the simplicity of arising of desire, hope, desperation, fulfillment, suffering in time. All these religious influences have prevented man, instigating in him a great fear of damnation, and a sense of extreme suspicion, doubt, from understanding the simple facts of the function of ‘what should be’ against ‘what is’ that produces hope, desire urge for substitution, improvement, expected change, and the fact of intrinsic quality of memory, thought, knowledge, conditioning as fragmentary, separating, limiting, isolating.
It is a great misconception on our part to believe that what we are living is true, the way we have to live is a fact, the things we have admitted as inevitable and natural and logical, reasonable are very facts that we must not doubt because many a elite, specialists, pundits, religious gurus have admitted everything we are living with is true and unquestionable. So it is a must that we question from the very fundamentals, basics, foundations, unless we are doomed forever, for the predecessors, our ancestors, the elite have never been seriously creative of a totally different way of living.
What a great significance, validity the civilization has given to thinking! To be practical, to live in this world you must adhere to ,you must think, think of the past and the future, take advices, lesions from the past, you must experience a lot, and plan for the future. You must not loose a bit of your past, experiences, memories and must learn to be successful in your life. Thinking such seriously about your life is the only way of solving your problems and facing the challenges of your life. This is one thing that is taught by the civilization to the flowering child that he is doomed forever. All great literature, poetry, philosophers, religions teach the same.
See, many things that you think are intrinsic, natural, are merely the products of, creations, inventions of social mind of time, desire, hope unwholesome. How do you know that this is the particular relationship with a girl and that is with the flower in the wilderness?
The most important fact is that you can know yourself, why you behave the way you do, you can transform yourself radically, if you are really serious, without any authority, knowledge or interference. If one cannot know himself, one is destined to be dependent on, waiting for a savior to come.
Science, psychology, can reveal truths, universal hypotheses and the brain can understand them all rationally, theoretically. But understanding them experiencing them, in the blood, in bones and flesh, in the whole being is a totally different fact. What cannot be thus experienced, truth that cannot be felt indeed is not truth, but merely a view empty.
Then, why do you want lasting, permanent, static solutions, to your problems? How did you come to know, feel, that what is lasting , permanent, static even psychologically, is what is real, truth?
Who can say, and who is to say that “I have found the solution to all the problems of manhood"? Civilization says one can find lasting, eternal solutions to the abiding, myriad, dynamic problems of man.
Poor Man; he has scarcely experimented even in time. Poets have hardly written anything experimental, anything revolutionary in emotion, feeling. Lovers have hardly ever been experimental, revolutionary, adventurous, and vulnerable in love. The adventure into the problem of relationship in time and no-time is the only experiment that revolutionizes the whole Human Content. And now he is challenged to create afresh- the writer, the musician, the lover- and to find out new modes of Expression.
My task is nothing but Living and Loving, keeping the flame of Life alive, creating the world afresh in self-expression, in void, in freedom, the Unknown. How wonderful it is to be a free-thinker! That means you have no abode, no anchorage, any authority, an ancestry. Free thinking implies you to be creative, afresh, new-born. And He is the true revolutionary.
As simple, innocent as the newly blooming flower in the wild, the Timeless One is; as deep as the still, tranquil, silent pond in the moonlight, is He. He is moving, dynamic as the winds and clouds over and about hills, and stiff, static, defined as that great huge tree that bears the spirit of life. How shameful do the words, language, logic become, when they try to describe Him!
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How proud we are of our so-called conclusions, our thinking, and our own point of view? We say this is how I think and that is how you think or the other thinks. Then how simply we conclude that this is my argument and that is your argument because people differ from each other and they have different ideas, opinions; so there may be different view points and we don’t want to bother about the other’s view points, opinions. This we call variety in humanity and say because of this variety world becomes colorful and beauteous. But has that ever happened? Has that enormous difference, variety in opinions, ideas made this a place of beauty and harmony? The serious glance would show the actual condition in which our world lies amidst chaos, havoc in relationship.
Difference in opinions, concepts, theories does make nothing but impassable gulfs, separations, isolation, fragmentation in relationship. It breeds adversary, stagnation, duality, multiplicity of sects, organizations, groups; it breeds intimidation, argument, debate, violence; for opinion is not the fact, the truth, the reality of what matters.
But how laboriously do we protect these variations, differences, limitations, separations? We know how much these separations value to us, how much we need them and dependent on, rely on them. Separations, limitations, fragmentation, conclusions have secured recognized places, status, prestige for me that my existence has been secured with recognition.
So it’s because of our shallowness, stupidity, deception that we have taken for granted the separate existence of our own opinions and that of the other. It’s because we don’t see the fact of what matters that we have debates, arguments. It is because of the presence of the basic division that I am separate from the other that I can have a separate opinion, and so no discussion, dialogue, mutual exploration can come into being. It’s only such discussion, dialogue that would solve the problems of humanity and would adequately respond to the dilemmas between man and man.
Thought divides. Only in the complete absence of thought is there a pure communication in relationship.
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Is it not really necessary to ask whether we are actually having problems in humanity? Why do we have a conception as suffering and do we actually have an objection to suffering? Simply is there something as suffering, pain, conflict that we should dispel? Are we so afraid of these feelings emotions, sensations of fear, anxiety, desperation, separation, loneliness, anxiety, and the rest that we want to withdraw from them? And , otherwise, is it either so that there’s nothing as suffering and that to feel it is a disease, or that it is a disease, defect not to have sensations, feelings of suffering, pain, that there a time would arise when man demands, asks for suffering, conflict?
Time is of relationship and so conflict that comes out of time is from relationship. Relationship is myriad and is with identities defined. Relationship is of the unknown. There’s relationship with a girl, a woman, a man, with the other, with that tree, that flower, wind, with this flowing river, with that little panda, the skylark. But why have we given such importance to human relationship? Why is there this choice, measurement, specification? Is it either because of tradition, habit, education or because of natural human instinct? Why is there the choice, selection of one emotive state of mind, one feeling, and sensation, against the other? But if the brain can manifest, establish, Unknown in every simple thing it touches, how would that be?
Conventional literary criticism and evaluation is based on the assumption that writers implement and use many methods and tools for producing various emotional effects on the readers, as do cinema directors, musicians, dramatists and other artists in their particular mediums. This again implies and is based on the assumption or the fact that various emotions, myriad mental effects, mental states can be artificially created, produced in the brain. Emotions, thoughts are material and can be artificially produced. That artificiality and any explanation to it cannot deny the thing, the mental state, emotion, which is a fact. See, when you see a movie or a dream you experience a range emotions at particular minutes, moments and are they ever the products of so called Karma?
As regards the manifested world as it is all around the writer and the writer himself, he maintains that suffering is a fact, that man suffers, and he doesn’t want to be with it. And that is the problem for it is something that he dejects, that he withdraws from, and he fights against. And he has no way out, stuck in the system itself, since dejection, withdrawal, effort against are all of the education, pattern, habit, past. He establishes in his exploration that the problem of humanity is not suffering, dukka itself but that he is stagnating, static, not moving, not creating. Dukka in that sense itself is the solution, the adequate response to the human problem to which for many thousand years man has ever endeavored to find answers. He was the system, he was the problem and he moved within the system, and at last he was still at the beginning. What is lacking in humankind is creation, to step out of that great inertia and set out in movement. This movement is that which is hazardous, adventurous, inventive, explorative. Man has to embark on this adventure all afresh and he has to begin it from where he is, what he is. And what he is is suffering, conflict, relationship, time. He has to let his soul be shaken and stop all his movements within the system. Then would there arise the movement of the unknown, of creation.
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Religions have postponed man’s liberation ever. Religions say man is pre-destined, doomed, has to suffer and strive for attaining freedom from birth to birth. So religions’ approach to man’s problems, challenges have become metaphysical, parapsychological and philosophical. So religions have escaped the fact that what is important is to understand man’s conditioning in time, stripped of all illusion, and that this understanding itself is natural, spontaneous, sudden light, the liberating factor. They have not shown that liberation is in this now and never in the next moment. Thus getting rid of those remote ideals, dogmas, illusions, conclusions man must go into the adventure of self- discovery in the now which is illuminating through understanding one’s relationship that he directly experiences. What changes man fundamentally is this understanding effortless, still, patient, innocent, objective, and nothing else.
So we need and must understand, investigate our thinking, the great storage of memories, past, time, conditioning, ideals, dogmas, culture, second-hand knowledge, self-created limitations, social formulae, standards, politics, economy and language. Then we must see the facts which themselves carry the enormous power of wisdom.
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The fields stretched across hundreds of acres and within the fields there were several huge trees standing like giants. They were so still, silent that even the breeze couldn’t shake a leaf. The fields were glorious with green splendor. It has been raining for several days, so the soil was as wet and lively as all other things around, especially the stream that flowed around the boundary of the fields, plumed with rain water. The village was at a distance and the woods separated the village from the fields. He was walking along the bank of the stream when that massive glory awakened in him and made him sit under a banyan tree, silently with no movement in the mind. The rain was pouring down and he bathed in the water so cool and distilled by the mossy pavilion of leaves and branches of the tree. There was music in the breeze, the running water and the dropping rain, in the silent trees and the cloudy sky above the fields. At the same moment there was nothing and there was everything.
For sensitivity there to be there must be sanity. Where conflict is there’s no sanity. Sanity is where silence, spirit, attention is from the roots of purgation of the mind of time. Conflict is where the mind of time of duality is. The duality is the thinker and the thought; it is in the what is and what should be; the thinker who chooses, selects, compares, tries, desires what should be against what is. When the mind itself understands, experiences, deconstructs this dualistic operation in a certain moment this reaction of the mind conditioned by past and projected future, what should be, the ideal, this conflicting operation ceases and then is there silence. In that silence what is is understood, realized in enormous sensitivity, which flows at the moment when the thinker has wholly ceased to be.
Simply because there must be love between man and man, between man and nature, simply because man must live on this earth in the milky way, there must be the ending of time, ending of suffering, conflict, fear.
Sanjaya Wilson
2007
Originally published at https://sites.google.com/site/thepolitica/calling-for-awakening and at http://www.politica.vze.com/
Found at: http://web.archive.org/web/20201021205917/https://sites.google.com/site/thepolitica/calling-for-awakening
