The Box

There is a growing understanding and confidence that we really do construct our own worlds purely with our minds and deepest desires.

On the one hand it is good to believe that we understand the rules of reality because that way we feel in control and secure about the world around us. On the other hand such attachment to fixed rules creates a box, an apparently unchangable and rigid reality - even when that reality causes us suffering!

The unbelievable truth is that we hold the map of our own reality, and if we wish to change that map then we can change our reality in any way.

A trivial example from my own now boring reality is my ex-girlfriend. In retrospect she was a fine girl. I certainly know that physically she was appealing to other men, she would turn heads in the street etc; she had a sensible regard for her appearance, was smart and people found her very pleasant. What is more remarkable is that she tolerated even enjoyed my life style - even living with me in a tent for some time. Now that breaks my mothers rules on women many times over. In my world however the rules are different - women one way or another restrict freedom and so I found her possessive and controlling - there is nothing she could do to avoid the rules of my system. So we parted.

Indeed that does break the rules I have grown up with. Nice girls need to groom themselves and require material comforts, wealth etc - yet here was a girl who was open minded to the idea that reality was non material, yet who came from very much the material world view. Anything is possible it just requires us to rethink exactly what we want, and be prepared to actually accept that.

The problem then for me is that I am in a box. It is a box which creates very great suffering because I have not resolved the rules - here they are:

Rule 1 - is that extreme romantic love is the greatest happiness.
Rule 2 - is that economic reality (work, money, buying, possession} are a severe drag and weigh life down.
Rule 3 - liberation from physical existence is the greatest happiness.
Rule 4 - life without extreme romantic love is not worth living
Rule 5 - true liberation is equanimity and treating all people as equals.
Rule 6 - extreme romantic love leads to family which is an economic event.

Complete mess up - this world does not hold together and I am suffering as a result. I know I can do each bit - yet when I try to put them together it all falls apart.

> Reena (God rest her soul)'s first partner was a millionaire - realising that maybe she wanted that I couldn't accept her based on Rule 2
> Extreme romantic love while bliss by itself cannot be a final goal because it breaks rules 5.
> Extreme romantic love breaks Rule 3 because romantic love is based on the physical.
> Rule 6 brings the whole thing into doubt anyway!!
etc

Conclusion there is never going to be perfect resolution because its impossible (not just that I can't believe it, but that I want opposing things!). This is the source of all my suffering - wishing for the self-defeating.

So which way is it? Romantic love with the physical entrapments, or non-romantic love and worldly liberation? For anyone worldly reading this the implication is that if you really wish for something then it is as good as got - belief that it is impossible (not just contradictory) is the reason why it has not already happened!

The answer is in a way already here. If I really? understand that the mind has the power to do all this, then don't I at the same time already realise that material existence (or the appearance of my world) is actually an illusion that I have created? In which case rather than just selecting various realities like a child in a sweet shop, why not step back a second and get to know the cause of all this! Why am I making myself suffer?

Purpose of Life?

Here is a suggestion.

The question posed since a child is "why am I here?". Which is an expression of 2 things.

(1) The sheer amazement and inexplicability of existence (partly conscious awareness and partly that there are things to be aware of at all)

and...

(2) Personal Life is a finite event. What is the balance by which I should judge that life? in other words how do I decide what to do.

A possible answer appeared yesterday. Buddha always turned people with questions like mine away - he had no time for such lines of enquiry. Why? because he would say that they do not aid in the extinction of suffering.

From which I can argue this. A life without suffering is also a life without problems and needing questions. Indeed to question life is maybe to suffering? while the bliss of self knowing and complete satisfaction (freedom from Dhukka) has no question - a bit like the experience of being in profound Love.

So the balance by which we judge life is simply whether it has helped remove suffering or whether it has caused suffering.

It does not matter what we do as long as it does not cause suffering. The search for the "good life" is thus very simple - does it cause suffering, or not?

Isn't that the 8 Fold Noble path? Right action, livelihood, speech, thought, concentration etc.

On the other hand maybe not. Plato would say that the "unexamined life is not worth living", and I certainly remmber as a child the bliss of examination of the worlds wonders - what better way to revel in the joy of existence that to investigate and question it.

Afterall what life has there been unless we have know that life?

So maybe there is some truth in the view that it does not matter what we do as long as we don't cause, and better alleviate sufferings; but I might add that awareness of the mind does bring with it the joy of examination of the world and the wonder at its existence.

X & Y

A friend once said that he had a "horizontal relationship"... i.e. the realtionship only worked in bed. I suppose that means that there are vertical relationships which only work out of bed - Platonic. These could be referred to as Y type and X type respectively.

It means that for any relationship we might express the degree of sexual content and spiritual content as a 2 dimensional ordered pair (x,y) and so the types of relationships form an area. Being multi-dimensional there is no interaction between the x and y components, rather that together they position the relationship.

X & Y are also the names of the chromosomes which determine males and females in mammals. Women are all x while men are a combination of x & y - which fits the analysis before in this blog ;-)

I suppose what we are looking for in a sexual partner is the X factor also, since the Y factor is what we find in friends.

Done It :-)

I just cleared my heart - a kind of reboot - when I received a google alert about a new species of large buttercup instead of the long awaited information about my friend.

Everything happens for a reason, at least in retrospect. The water flows the long way around a rock but when it reaches the other side its only grievance is the joy of a different story to tell.

No I don't need to know anything about my friend. She is dead. That means a lot I realise, it means that the future will be completely different from the past, it means that I dream of nothing and have feelings for nothing, that what could have been and what was are of no more importants in the world of the living.

The problem has been all these questions. What if... maybe I did it wrong, maybe i would have been more satisfied had things gone differently, maybe the future would have been better had she lived, maybe I missed out on something important, maybe...

In all of these thoughts something is blindingly clear: I believed that she was important and that I needed her for some reason/completion/satisfaction/bliss state of mind.

In reality however we know that we need nothing. The problem is that 100% of the world around us says something else, and almost everyone we meet strives and takes things from the world which i have understood to mean that they need them - or at least can't do without.

The truth is that we are perfect already and everything we take sits side by side us. We can't incorporate it into us, or make it a part of us. I wished that my consciousness or heart might fuse with this girl - it felt that way. In the cartoon "Ghost in the Shell" this is the romantic notion - it is a myth. Two do not become One, because the sense of 2 is simply a product of desire. She is important because I desire her thus she become my other, there are 2 and to wish they were one is to defeat desires process of separation. Better not to desire in the first place!!

I am healthy, I am fed, warm, happy yet I have suffered more than I ever imagined possible for this emotion/desire/love/need etc. It is insanity/addiction/delusion/mental disease. The truth is that it is utter myth to believe that we "need" anything. The belief that we have gained or lost is myth for this reason. I am enchantedly happy to have been her friend and that is it. Very happy to have loved her purely and without any negative feelings. That is it. It is gone.

To say this yesterday would have broken my heart. But the movement to let go is not one of rejection, non-care, hostility, hatred, unkindness but simply a pure realisation that my Being is sufficient and without need.

It puzzles me however that my rejections in the past - that I made to protect myself from becoming jealous and angry - caused her suffering. Maybe she was not so carefree herself? She said that she feared rejection, and she cried when I left. Ironically my need became a source of suffering for her - had I been as carefree as i am today then I would have stayed to the end - but i would not have generated such absolute devotion - but then I would have been stronger and a better support to her when her father died. Swings and roundabouts. Truth is King, Myth the Demon. I am free (after crying out yesterday to myself for exactly that!)

The question now returns to the Void space she leaves and that eternal question: what to do with thing called Life (before mine runs out also)?

A solution to all problems...

Through the window of my current pain I can see so clearly now the solution to all lifes difficulties and it is exactly as the Buddhists say. I do not have the strength yet, or have not yet unpicked to knotted fishing line in my heart yet, so it remains not fully tested - but it looks very convincing...

When my father died my sister and I drove the Brighton under cloudless morning skies. There was not a car on the 6am July road and we arrived at the shimmering sea in silence. I stripped off and dived into the cool blue waters in a bid to wash off away heart ache. Swimming out and then under the waters I hoped to return to the surface as a new self ready for the journeys ahead...

All around lay the gently rolling waves as far as the wide blue sky which arched vastly above me and within shone the gleaming sun - at that instant I saw that the sun cared not a bit for my suffering, the sky was large enough to hold any day that passed and the sea was gentle and unaffected by what to me was the most catastrophic day of my life - the day I knew I had to find my feet and live without the man who had created me and supported me all these years.

It became obvious that what was at the same time unsurmountable onstacle and grief was also of no gravity or importants at all. The seas, sky and sun gave me the strength that day to go on without real concern and to give birth to the thoughts recently...

Again that new year I went to the hill behind our village and looked at the houses pondering that in that house there my father no longer waited for new year. Looking at the other houses I wondered which have experienced losses like mine; all of them was the obvious reality. I imagined the small valley through time: a hundred years when most of the houses would not have been there; two hundred when the oldest trees would have been young and the estate house and grounds would have been intact; then 10,000 when maybe the first people camped by the small spring and under the huge canopy of oaks; then the future when even I am dead and new people live here; and so on forever. The turning wheel of peoples lives coming and going on this same valley of land made me see again the vastness of all existence and how the lives of the things in this world are simply brief turning of the endless huge wheel. That endless huge wheel, the vastness of the sky which can absorb any day of any gravity that is the end of suffering - the eternal.

So even today i see it. The two days of patience with the ex have taught me not to become angry so easily, and have taught me to rest instead of fight for my desires. I've not made much progress but its a small move in the right direction.

Even today this growing strength is developing. The sun was warm and I wanted to bathe in it as i walked to work... but the building were casting long shadows and I hated them for it. Same route walked every day for years but today its the buildings who are being nasty! Quite absurd I said to myself - it's not the building but because you want to sun that there is a problem. If you can not want to sun then no problem.

The stubbornness of us to let go of desires is the whole problem. "IIIII WANNA HAVE IT" go
the inner movements like a spoilt child - and it screams and fights and looks to get it and there is Suffering bounding onto the scene. See the huge sky looking down without judgementally, caring like a mother and we see how foolish we are to make such a big thing out of something so small. We let go the want for sunlight and we are at peace. It's simply inner movements, positive thoughts and a lot of very hard work and suffering!!

Newton was right with his second law. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. I wanted this girl very badly. Eventually jealousy took over and I punched a letter box - strange thing is it was I who got hurt! (Broken hand to this day - I like it, it reminds me not to make the mistake again.) Same with our whole self. We move out and the world moves out to meet us. Punch out and the world punches back. Need out and the world needs back. Give out and the world gives back. Love out and the world loves back.

That's as far as science goes in helping us tho. The belief that there is an immutable world of external substance which exists independent of us is the most destructive thought that persists in the world - along with the idea that the Natural world works by selfishness. Both are profoundly one sided for their opposite is equally important. The world exists within us, and the "selfish" individual is an expression of forces outside itself!

Whether material existence is inside or outside is unimportant. All we know is that when I punch a letter box there is an equal force backwards. Whether we existed before or after the punch is rather irrelevant!! It's in that moment of interaction between myself and the letterbox that things happen and the world exists. Abstract deductions from moments like this are interesting but profoundly unhelpful.

When we think of the world we need only know that "what you give, is what you get" and that is how the world will seem to you. Post a letter in the letter box and it seems a very nice thing. Punch it and it's a tough unforgiving adversary!!

So we must never think that problems come from outside us, and eventually do away with the thought that they come from inside us (altho this is the better of the two because it helps put away the unhelpful materialistic view). The solution lies simply in how we treat the world and that is a matter of hard work, deep consideration and care - in the face of the nuclear war of sufferings that we might be experiencing at the time.

Thus there is no unlucky me, sad me, abused me, hurt me because the solution to all our problems lies simply in treating "The World" in a better way. And very importantly I say "The World" because it is not any external thing in the world we are treating better, but the vast sky and endlessly rotating wheel of all existence that we must treat like our mother. Picking and chosing the things we treat well, will mean that the world becomes very picky about whether to help us or not!









Matrialism

Status (relative/absolute value)

Reading the economist last week there is good stuff on economics. Finally economists are thinking about the problems.

Back from my experiment in working and financial existence of the past 5 years - keeping down a job with enthusiasm and non-cynicism - I now have nothing but scorn for what I am doing, but it pays the bills and keeps me out of trouble, and gives me the opportunity to experiment furthur.

The problem with economics is that we have gotten ourselves into a mess based upon class and status. According to the economist there is a rapid plateau in happiness and contentment as an economy matures. After that people do not report an improvement in their sense of happiness regardless of economic wealth.

The reason? it is status. "positional" values like having the best car, house and best position in a company obviously are relative not absolute. Thus what we have is not the issue, it is that we have more than other people. The problem with expanding economies is that everyone gets more so the relative merits never change.

If poorer people seem happy maybe it is because they are still dealing with absolute values like food and water, and so relative values are less important. In economies like ours relative values are the only thing. I live an absurdly basic life - recently living in a tent - because it reminds me the difference between absolute values (like the sunrise and dawn chorus) from relative values like the size of my bosses absurd car/tank. Keeping a mind firmly on absolute values reminds me just how lucky I am!! really it is a beautiful world looked at absolutely. Looked at it relatively it's quite ugly.

The only people who are happy are those who could never be rich, and those who are rich. The sad bunch in the middle have to run to stand still. As the economist notes the harder we work to get ahead, the harder we force other people to work and the wheel of wealth just spins faster as faster - generating more and more wealth which goes to make the prize for the few winners. The accelerating pace of work generated with economic systems suspect is showing up in health statistics and general malaise about life. In UK it is expressed in the house prices which mean we are forced to overwork even for basic essentials - unless you take radical action ;-)

Thus people will always make themselves unhappy by comparing their status with those around them - no amount of economics can help that. Altho the collumnist did argue that in a free market their are more niches in the market and so more opportunities for people to find their special place.

Just to recap other stuff in this subject area. Economies also make us unhappy by creating endless desires. Just as we have the latest computer - a new one comes onto the market and soon what was the best is very mediocre. There is a contant creation of dissatisfaction and the belief that by shopping we can make it go away! bad mistake!!

Also Capitalism has really messed the world up. People once thriving in more absolute value systems suddenly found their land taken over by landlords who then taxed them. To pay the rents thinking had to change, and this began the process that led to abandoning the land and looking for money - that is unless they were forced off the land by landlords wanting it for other uses like commercial farming. Once without a mean of living people become helpless and totally dependent upon the economy and enter the machine of wealth production that feeds the rich owners with the vague idea that oneday they might be rich. Its a very exploitative and dependency forming process which we in the West have been in for so long we forget where it started.

The rich of past generations who could relax to some extent from the burden of proving themselves financially came up with lots of grand notions about how special and wonderful the human race was. We have poetry and writing, arts and dance - celebrations of life from those who have time to do it. The sad reality I am realising is - especially in the tooth and nail existence experienced by the middle spectrum wealthy of developed economies - that life is governed almost entirely by over the fence comparisons with others. The frenzy for 4x4 cars cannot be inspired by anything practical - I don't even drive yet am still alive - it is simply the embarrasment of being seen in town with anything smaller. I admit to a small sense of reservation about bringing out this Compaq Presario on the train to Sevenoaks since I naturally compare it to the Sony Vaios and other machines - yet I instantly remind myself that functionally and absolutely I have only complete satisfaction from it.

Thanks to the economist its clear now my unease and rebellion from economics - I will reamin true to what is real and absolute and shall continue to shun with nothing but scorn any thought which would receive happiness or sadness from comparison with others...

unless it is to say how bad I am and how good they are, and how I should learn and be more like them!

Look down in matters of money and only up in matters of the heart.

A gale in the heart

Strong this force which binds us to the Earth, I can see why so many who would be free have faultered, and why maybe I will too. Me ex has communicated a jealous email to the sister of my muse, and I have been furious and now no-one is talking, the narrative ends there - if I want to know more about her I will have to find out myself. It is a very sad situation and brings into focus the power of these feelings for her which remain completely untainted after 9 years. The pain I feel now is exactly what I felt that night tossing and turning the first day we met. This IS my nemesis and also my most important test. The wisdom is there, I can almost see through this - but somehow I lack the strength to get there. I'm so sure these feelings of love are good, yet the world around has only scorn for them, and I am tempted into anger and hatred for them, certainly I will not replace what seems to be the highest with what is certainly the lowest!

This feeling is like a wind that blows through a valley, a gale, an unrelenting unstoppable force. All day and all through the night it howls tearing, through the trees and through the village, driving the clouds across the sun and the moon. I can shelter, but I cannot run or stop it. Sometimes the sun shines but I dare not look at it for my eyes would smart. Through my windows I see that all is well, but I dare not open them. It is bleak in this valley, but the forces that bring us into material existence must be this hard and unbreakable, and the lessons we learn as hard as we are stubborn. I am beginning to see this force within me as a dragon to be despatched. Once it was the form of a beautiful angel, but now its darker side is revealed. When I have the strength I will leave this pitiful hollow in to which I am cowering.

What is it to value?

It is an impossible thing to see that we are valuable. There is no reason for it. There is no proof of it. It just is.

We are not ordinarily valuable. There is nothing more valuable than yourselves. Yet we need not be proud or big-headed because we are no more valuable than anything else.

We have nothing to prove. There can be no clothes, no possesions, no speech, no cleverness, no qualifications, no actions, no memories, no future, no friends who can prove you are valuable. It just is, all by itself.

Watching an Xmas present of U2s 18 videos - a band I have followed on and off since 1986 - it has brought me to remember the reason for their brilliance, the inspiration they have brought to me again and again, that beauty and an open heart in life are real possibilities. One of Bonos greatest moments, and also one of his most personal, the final song and video "You can't always make it on your own" is a sign post to the world of what life can mean if you take it on seriously.

In one take with no editing Bono delievers the song to his recently departed father, and expression of a once in a lifetime loss, in a once in a lifetime performance. Those few minutes capturing the heart of a persons life, the minute details of a precious reality, normally un-noticed in the vast world we inhabit, but here amplified to reach a billion people. It is an extraordinary event.

Is not every moment in our lives as unique and precious as those in which we remember the loss of our own father? is not every moment a once in a lifetime thing? Even if it is a moment of spectacular ordinariness and unremarkable plainness, it is the last such moment in our whole life. The past is gone forever with no turning back, and the future has yet to happen, we have only this moment as it is spreading in all directions throughout present space and filled with cool air as though emerging from the stormy rains of the past, only this moment as it is glinting in bright colours like a newly hatched butterfly, on this moment the first and last in our life.

The moment in which we stand is like ourselves. It is the most valuable thing we have.

I used to struggle to reveal my heart from the abuse and stagnation of a world that seemed to me to put other things above the human. "Human Resources" a term which typified the way the world has learned to value the productivity of humans above them themselves - as though there were other creatures out there more valuable for which our time could be dished up for consumption. I rebelled against this world and with that rebellion came distaste and rejection of it. But it opened my heart, that led to the 9 years I have recently spoke of, and within them learning the teachings of Mahayana Buddhism.

Is not the valuable self, at home and at peace within its valuable moment completely unaffected by any abuse or surround? If my last moments on this planet are wretched ones, will I spoil those moments in despair or hatred? or will I value them, as I do myself, and ensure they do not go un-noticed and unlived? A distant Dutch ancestor died cursing his captors on the execution block - is not our death too important a time to waste in curses? We die every moment and are reborn, there is never a time to waste in curses.

This I must remember, at the risk of embalming it in a tomb of words, that no matter what circumstances I am in, I must never doubt my own value and the value of that moment, so that I am up to the challenge of facing it and living it. It is not that I have anything especial to do, nothing especial to prove, and no memories or certificates to take home with me afterwards, it is just enough to value myself and my presence in this once in a lifetime experience of being here now - that beats all the emotions, feelings, memories that any event may serve me up, it was enough to face it and value it.

Really U2 are saints, prophets of our time, connecting us with God and love - never has the time been that they have not been an inspiration.

& the Void

The problem that emerges with the awareness of higher energy, that which does not need others, but seeks union with them, is that most of what we call life becomes surplus to requirements.

Physical attachment, the need to "share ones life", companionship and all the things we do associated with these lose their meaning. What is the meaning of National, religious, or personal identity when we are no longer the black of white of the yin-yang, but rather in the position of seeing the inter-relationship? We might be black or white, but we don't see the blackness opposed to the whiteness, but the inter-relationship. We might be male or female, but we don't see the maleness opposed to the femaleness, but the inter-relationship. There can be no desire for something we haven't got, there can be no need to change what we are into what we are not, nor the need to change another into what they are not.

What we are left with is the Void. That infinite space from which, and into which, all things pass. The problem that faces beings who still have partiality (either black or white), and desires for things which are apparently beyond them and still in the Void, is that the Void is an abysmal abyss. The problem is the abide in peace with the Void, and not to allow ones disturbed consciousness to make demands of that Void and so set ourselves apart from it. That is the challenge as this life goes into a new phase, a phase with no "relationships" and having lost many of my friends. The next bit is alone I think.

Existence, Sex, Love - conclusion?

I will see existence just as it is,
And through this I will Be.
And with books and systems all behind,
I'll live a life that is me.

That was the slogan that began all this in March 1997. The call to myself to emerge from the Text and experience reality without narrative. Unfortunately my great aspirations ended in sensual love, and then lust and then negativity and Death.

But, one end is another beginning, turn from a door closing and see another opening.

My lab partner made me realise something yesterday: there are simply not the girls around (anymore) who understand spirituality. As a French house mate once said: no matter what a girl says or does, what she deeply wants is the best orgasm. That is what we call "making love". But that isn't Love - its a drug experience, one that I have been looking toward believing that it was the way to true fulfillment and happiness: infact nearly every narrative from Western Music to Eastern film says the same thing - it is a totally dominant and all pervading, almost authoritarian, imperative to us.

It causes great confusion to find that the girl you loves only wants a profound orgasm, when all you want is spiritual unity. But, I realise the mistake now - I have definitely been fishing in completely the wrong pool of water.

Looking into the pool that was "my muse" for the diamond of eternal happiness I notice a reflection that was looking at me, and while the reflection looked like me and I felt affinity with this creature, I have realised that it is not me and remains forever in the frame of that watery grave. Were I and my reflection to ever meet and become one, then there would be hope for man and woman and for love; but alas the future of my reflection when I walk away is to dissipate, cos for eternity we are doomed to be separate.

You see take a man and woman in naked sexual loving embrace: the reason for the embrace is that the man finds the woman attractive in her femaleness, and the woman finds the man attractive in his maleness. Her mind is full of him, and his is full of her. How then can these two minds ever be unified? For this either he would have to sympathise her attraction in him, and she his in her; or they would have to see beyond the difference of their sexuality and unify in a world beyond the differences of sexuality. In either case the experience of sexual-need in "another" is replaced by self-satisfaction as we are either enabled to take over our partners attraction in ourself, or to lose that attraction.

It is Yin-Yang. When we are outside the whole we can see the interrelatedness of the parts, side by side, yet together, and within each lies the other as lovers looking eye to eye. But if we are either of the parts then all we can see is the other, we miss the point and seeking to unify in some simple way while remaining at the perspective of one of the parts is The Myth. We can only unify when we step to the higher level and see ourselves in the same light as our lover: equals side by side. And that means that we need to undo our sexual attraction which makes them the object and the partner of ourselves - that is the inequality that worldly sexual partnerships depend upon.

So the project of sensual sexual love with "my muse" has ended. I know this because these days I am rid of the sexual frustrations and confusions surrounding the "failure" of that aspect of the relationship and of myself. "My muse" leaves a very peaceful and pure longing for a very close friend, a spiritual friend, a person whose identity within me was forged in the flames of lower desires, but who now remains as a diamond in my heart. There is no need anymore, I have lost nothing; in death she is as beautiful and wonderful as she was in life. Hopefully this might be the end of this rather selfish epitaph, which says more of me than of her, but for anyone who knew her, her name was Reena Mandalia, God bless her.

The root of suffering

On the other hand I have become reinvogorated with the other approach...

I promised myself I would read the Phaedo after the recent events. Scanning the begining yesterday I was interested to see Socrates' opening contemplation: after being released from his chains and feeling the life coming back into his leg, he observes how closely pain and pleasure are associated - where there is one the other is sure to follow. It is as if the creature has two heads.

Well there we are, what more do I need. You see what the last 9 years have done is virtually obliterate the childhood hope that I had that bliss abiding was possible in this world. After reading too many fairy tales and their ilk, one is left with this dream of eternal happiness and invariabley that through romantic love - even while ones intellectual self knows perfectly better. I had my intellectual self fooled by the depth and complexity of that romance I feel.

If I do finally kill the dream and accept that where there is pleasure their is pain, and without pain there cannot be pleasure then I experience now simply the mirror of the pleasures I experienced 9 years ago. The beast whether it be pain or pleasure be the same. That beast ofcourse is desire. It brings us both pain and pleasure, and the stronger the desire the greater the two. I knew as the roller-coaster set off 9 years ago that I probably could not handle what came next. The question has been do I get stronger the face the forces of such high energy travel, or do I see the peace of not riding at all. Unsure as yet...

What exactly was Buddha teaching? They call him the desireless one: one might think that he attained his peaceful abiding by killing the serpent with two heads so that he had neither pleasures nor pains. His two final tests as the hands of Mara - the demoness of illusion - were her demons and daughters; repulsion and attraction: which he tackled with compassion and non-attachment. On the other hand you too often find the belief that his path simply ends suffering and leaves you pleasure.

Getting it together with the ex physically yesterday, and testing that theory of giving; it was good but it was not so good as to sell my soul over this. Temptations may be great but the boy aint becoming a man for any temporary desire or woman. It will be for himself and for immutable truth and eternity alone. Afterall when I am dead what use will all these petty desires have been, and my intellect will no longer be pursuaded that there is immortality in all this.

Love is a much harder, stronger, more patient, giving, peaceful and wiser thing than the old romantic would have wanted. There is no abandoning to the bliss here, that is only the soft seductive call of Mara.

The man who gathers flowers (of sensual pleasure), whose mind is distracted, and who is insatiate in desires, the Destroyer brings under his sway. [48]

As a bee without harming the flower, its colours or scent, flies away, collecting only the honey, even so should the sage wander in the village. [49]
Dhammapada

However reading this: doesn't it say that pleasures are not to be denied. It is only that one must not seek to take the pleasures with oneself. But the question is, as has always been for me, is not the act of enjoying also the act of wanting? Can I enjoy that which I do not want? And if I want it, and do not get it then is it not suffering?

I can only understand this to mean that there are two types of pleasure. There are those pleasures we may attain my feeding a desire; the other head of the demon being pain. There are those pleasures which arise within the mind, which have no object and which are gained not through the external "thing", but rather through the letting go of the thing. I have not read this, it is unclear.

The first move is ascetism, of which I am well happy with. But its movement away from the other world of sensory excitement means that I learn nothing of that other world, and invariably I am drawn back to explore. Buddha at least was finished with the sensory before his ascetism. I am neither satisfied, nor unsatisfied with either yet: though maybe getting tired of the sensory world.

If the boy becomes a man then, it is only to gain full retirement from that world, after which the other way follows surely, and after that the middle and full appreciation of the two heads of Mara.

To Be or Not to Be/The Boy becomes a Man

Altho Hamlets speech is supposed to be his contemplation of suicide I always saw more relevance of life in it.

At each point in life don't we ask the same question? To be a good person or not. To be a happy person or not. To be a doctor or not. To be a lover or not. To be a monk or not etc etc.

For when we chose not to do something do we kill that future self?

And what do we replace it with? Not another self, but with the NULL self and "we lose the name of action".

The question is then what lies in that "sleep of death", the abiding of that self which has turned against itself.

This morning I realise that if we do not attain that which we have chosen then we experience suffering. I have not attained that which I chose as deeply as my heart is deep. I would not have attained it because attain it or not, Death would have stolen it in only 9 years anyway.

But on that cold December afternoon as the sun was setting on Sloane Square, if I had not looked into her eyes and chosen her then I would not be mourning the death of a self at all. Had she worked in another store, turned a different corner, had I made my yeses at the other girls I worked with, this would never have happened. I heart made my bed but I didn't sleep in it and my heart has only itself to blame.

If I had chosen Death instead, and denied that temptation to fulfill my hearts deepest desire as I had every day until that moment when I was already 26, then I might now be 35 and still free from this pain.

The question to Be or Not to Be I am still contemplating as I did that day, but now I fear it is too late. I have chosen to Be, to accept mortal, finite reality as my bedrock and for that i will know suffering like the mermaid who desires to walk with morals: every step on broken glass. Can ther be a turning back to innocence, to a time when I was free, immortal, unafraid of the demon Death?

I do not know whether it is too late. Like a horse fighting its teather I am exhausted of this struggle to free myself of fetters. The moth in a room with a candle unable to escape the lure of that deadly flame. I do not even have the certainty that NULL was the way. Has the boy unavoidably become a Man?

Submission & Domination

Hegel is a god of philosophy as far as I'm concerned because of his dialectical process and because of his arguments regarding Master & Slave. It goes something like this:

At the outset when people meet there is the chance of equality. This is not simple because the consciousness has two sides - the subject and the object. Each person will view the "other" person as an object in the world.

In our own mind we are a powerful subject with the power to objectify anything. It might follow reasonably that the "other" person has a subjectivity too.

There is a problem in doing this however because if we recognise that the other person has a valid subjectivity then we are at the same time giving them the power to objectify us.

Being objectified strips us of our subjectivity and we may as well be a stone. It is death. The fear of being objectified (zoned/blanked) means that we tend to shy from acknowledging people's subjectivity and see them preferably as an object, as a stone. That is the root of the psycho/sociopaths problem.

One progressive solution to this problem is the sub/dom, Master/Slave, King/subject relationship. Here the Master has absolute power and objectifies all others. The others can't accept their objectivity (which would be death) instead they accept slavery because they can at least experience what a free subjectivity is by being pushed around. What Hegel argues is that the King is a static consciousness because he has the illusion of freedom already, while the slaves are a dynamic consciousness desiring the freedom of their king and so developing. Eventually revolution rips through the situation as the slaves over throw the king and liberate themselves. They do not however take up thrones themselves because each liberated slave understands that the king was not really free, only free because they had accepted slavery. No-one becomes a king, no-one becomes a slave and people see each other equally. That is the emergence of spirit in Hegel. The "I that is We and the We that is I".

Now years ago this was the narrative I used regarding my slavery to my muse. I suddenly remember this and need to ponder where I am in this dialectic now. Its late time to sleep... sweet dreams

My Muse is me?

I am finding more and more out now that I am in communication and am receiving alternative narratives. My muse had many friends, altho i always remember her saying that I was her best. I also realise that maybe she did make a complete decision to pidgeon hole me as a friend rather than lover, because her loves tended to be rather shallow affairs from what I could tell.

It brings me closer to this realisation. Maybe she was not the person I thought she was. In which case the emmense beauty that i felt in her presence, and the emmense respect I had for her, and the emmense love I had for her were actually all created by me!

This means that the power of these experiences is not testament to her at all, but rather to the potential in my own mind. It is true that for whatever reason she was the key carrier to that special door in my heart I had been unable to open before. But now that it was opened do I need her anymore anyway? It was the question of how to open that door which is what had kept me searching as a child for this girl.

The question I have been puzzling all day and just now over dinner with my ex is: can the mind really be self-sufficient like the monks say?

If I have learned anything during this process it is that desires go REALLY deep. You can't just choose to turn them off, and you can't just practice them away. Desires ARE karmas and if you have them then you are in the cycle of rebirths and must face the joy/pain that comes.

Freedom is not the right to have what you want, because you are still governed and enslaved by your wants. Next time I want a girl I'm back into slavery. True freedom would be the freedom to ignore a want when it arises. This seems to be the opposite of mundane spiritual practise which tells you that if you do good things then you can get what you want. Isn't it better not to want things in the first place! Thank God I don't want a £10 million yacht at the moment!!! imagine the hastle and slavery involved in finding that sort of money for starters.

I would say of my muse and her sister now that they are simply the nicest and best people I have ever met. If I cannot be friends with them because of death or whatever obstacles then I feel it is because I have not attained the level of goodness. I still have a very great deal of purification to undergo to rid myself of negative impulses, negative attitudes and general mental weight, sluggishness and baggage.


I have also made a vow that in future I am going to only give in relationships, and expect nothing in return. If my partner does not give me what i want (sexually or otherwise) then that is just tough. If it gets too bad I'll move on. This is what I did with my muse, but it is only today when I fully understand what i was doing. I feel that the freedom that comes from expecting and demanding nothing of a partner is the greatest thing you can give, next to yourself obviously.

I also realise that we must be courageous enough to dare to think that we are of interest and value to other people. i said this before that when we desire people we often forget to see our own value. Rather than seeking other peoples value I am going to concentrate on my own value so that I can give this to others. Again this was my game plan in the past, but it got confused because in this "push the button" (Sugababes) world it seems that girls require the guy to make the first move, which I always confused within myself with taking. I do not want to take, but in future I will push the button so that i can give.

Interestingly this is all true to my original game plan as a child. Total respect for the other through sacrifice of ones own wants in favour of total giving. It is almost like monastic renunciation except it plays out like ordinary living. I wonder if this really works. Next stop is to try it ;-) !

p.s. Ex-girlfriend and I have finally come to an excellent resolution too! She accepts that i do not want the relationship, and she sees that not as rejection and devaluing of her, but simply my freedom to chose. It is my freedom to chose which has been totally rejected in this relationship for 2 years which has left me a bit like a caged animal and really fossilised in side. When she gave me the choice whether I wanted the relationship today I could feel the blood flowing back into my core, just the hint of a breeze on my soul as it came to life. The answer was no, but she understood. Now that is a truely amazing event. I can say I love her now! as a friend (now is this a hall of mirrors I am walking through!!??)

You can only have that which you are able to let go of.

or in Bono's words (U2) - if you hold onto something so tight, you already lost it.

James Bond & Super-heroes

I disagree with the direction of the latest bond (Casino Royal). Traditional Bond fits the bill of the super hero.

Basically film Bond (different from book Bond) is a boy's fantasy world. The main sexual figure is Miss Moneypenny who despite having the closest relationship with Bond is also off limits. This fits the role of a boys mother. When Bond is playing in the back garden (the World) we know he is never in any real trouble and no matter where he is, he can usually rely upon a meet up with Q (a deus ex machina - or at least his gadgets). Q is either his father, or an Uncle figure. Q treats Bond like the schoolboy he is. If Q is not his father, then his father is the serious bloke Bond has to report back to in Whitehall - i.e. Miss Moneypenny's boss (which fits family stereotypes well too). The world of Bond is very small - just his immediate family - , and it all revolves around him.

Now this would be boring for a school boy so he needs an adventure and an adversary to pit his wits against. We know that Bond is never going to fail. His adversary is good enough to make Bond look great when he defeats him, but not so good that Bond looses. Its a bit uncanny, almost as though the adversary is an imaginary creation of Bond as he plays with his toys in the back garden.

Bond needs to create this adversary in order to show how good he is. This dialectic between the Good Guy and the Bad Guy is universal. The Good Guy needs the Bad Guy in order to look good, indeed he actually creates the Bad Guy in his struggle to be Good. Its great in films, its a nightmare when politicians start playing these games for real!

On the other hand the Bad Guy is always this mad sociopath whose only real reason for existence is killing Bond. No-one else is smart enough to even bother with. When the crunch comes however the Bad-Guy can't kill Bond though, because without Bond his fun is gone, and more importantly Bond created him!

Bond appeals to the immature male Ego perfectly - he's a Man's-Boy playing in the security of our parents home, dreaming of saving the world and getting the girl.

Typical of all Super-Heros however were he ever to get the girl in reality it would blow everything apart because he would have to acknowledge another person outside his narcisistic world. Unlike Miss Moneypenny he can't reply upon this other person because they might reject him and leave. In opening up to another consciousness the Boy-Ego no longer has the universal power it did within the play ground of its own mind and so the girl would bring about a relativising of the Boy and his realisation that he is just another ordinary individual. Thus when Super-heros fall in love they lose their special powers.

When this happens Bond would become useless to the sociopathic Bad-Guy who would lose all reason for existence himself. The whole fantasy world would disintegrate, and the games in the play ground would end.

In Casion Royal however Bond is not a true hero. His narcisism is replaced by the logic that he can't trust other people, he becomes a cold and heartless individual - a victim of the world - far removed from the cheeky, playful boy in the earlier bonds where we can indulge in a revisit of our own fun childhoods.

On the other hand it is a very stylish film, and a cinematic breath of fresh air ventilating away the stuffy fast action, fast edited, cgi rubbish in Hollywood.

Regarding my own journey at the moment, I wonder if I have not been stuck in my own Super-hero fantasy world for the last 9 years - refusing to grow up. I may be 35, but I would confess to still being a boy at heart. The question for me is, do I grow up? and if so do I "get the girl" in future (which means an awful lot of other bits of growing up)? and does growing up mean seeking satisfaction from external sources?

In Buddhism/Hinduism as I understand it, everything that we experience is created by our own deep minds. And we understand that the world and our minds are the same. So, we do not need anything from the world (because that is really our mind) before we are satisfied.

Now what is the difference between that and Super-hero narcisism? It is interesting to me that being a monk could look very much like remaining a boy!

Why my focus on morality?

Blimey now that I am being chased by a collapsing relationship into the arms of my computer, I've got time to write down everything!!

Here is the biggest narrative of my life - the struggle with evil. Some is quite ugly, but it's what has happened in my life so its in the blog on life.

Aged around 8 I was reminded in horror of the worst thing I ever did. In the summer of 1977, when I was six, my preprep group was joined for an afternoon each week by a preschool group. I remember this dark haired, doe eyed girl that became the object of my desire. She used to wear a strap dress and I wanted to take it off. Aged 6 my weak mind was consumed. I asked her if she would, she said no, so I chased her. She was screaming and crying and got to the teacher. I remember having no care for her at all, I was like an animal.

Aged 8 I was horrified to think i could have been so utterly uncaring. I may as well have killed her for how bad I felt. It was a dagger in my heart, an end to my innocence and the loss of the belief that i was good. I racked my memory to check I had not done other bad things. I remembered doing the same thing to her the week after. I got my friends to help in a game to catch her. When they caught her they asked what to do, I said take her dress off, some complained that it was wrong and told teacher and I was told to play in another part of the playground away from the object of desire. There were other events that troubled me. I once pushed someone in a race and they got cut on glass - not deliberate, but it all mounted together to an awareness that I needed to guard this wild creature to make sure it didn't do bad things. That guilt was always with me and guided me to be a better person.

As a teenager I still mourned the harm I had done. I wondered if she might have been psychologically effected by the events, that those few summer days of madness may have changed her whole life. It was a guilt too hard to bear. I vowed never to hurt another person in the whole of my life.

That vow did me well except for fights with my parents. I even hit my mother and father a few times. It was enough however to purify me and in 1983 after confirmation and praying every night I attained a trance by accident while doing some homework. That experience began my consciousness properly, I saw the infinite space of the mind, it was the most beautiful experience ever. I ran down stairs to tell my father and he must have thought i was mad. That he knew nothing about it I suppose is why i forgot about it until I came upon it by accident in Buddhism.
I had been told by friends at school that what i was talking about in general in life was like Buddhism, but it took 10 years to check it up.

Then in 1987 the next terrible thing happened. I had not had a wank for a week on holiday, and while fantasising freely in the car on the way home I imagined a coven meeting in the forest to summon the devil and in the ecstatic orgy a man cut off a girls head and started to screw it from the neck into the wind pipe!

My mind stepped in the moment it knew what was happening and froze everything. How the hell do you deal with that! where did it come from? why did I think that? did I enjoy that?

A question was raised in my mind. Did I enjoy it as a sadistic act? It was a horrible question because it was suggesting that causing suffering could be a goal of desires. That 6 year old beast of a child could have enjoyed inflicting pain.

I remembered again another event. A friend showed me how easy it was to trip up his baby cousin. I was gripped by a sadistic pleasure in tripping him and making him cry. We only did it once, but remembering that was enough to prove that inflicting pain can be pleasurable in the free unguarded mind.

My own self was now a demon to be guarded. I was deeply guiltly, apologetic and pained by the huge responsibility I had to keep this inner self in chains and guarded from further cruel and evil thoughts and behaviour. I began my moralistic thinking to try and see if it was possible to work out what caused these violations of human decency in my mind, in a bid to cut them off and free my mind from its endless duty.

The 3rd and final trip came at college in 1991. I was continuously troubled by the nagging knowledge that there were unwholesome elements in my mind. I was always fearing that they might spring forward and give me that intolerable sadistic pleasure again. I also began to wonder whether the grotesque things you see in the news sometimes and in films of people killing and abusing people for kicks and pleasure were motivated by the same demons I had. I began to wonder whether I was destined to become one of these people - a psycho as I feared it.

One night while talking to a friend he mentioned that it was possible to do psychological tests to determine whether people were psychos. I was stoned and that was enough to do something to my brain. If an external person could determine independently of my own freewill whether I was a psycho, and presumably whether i was going to offend, then I had "no will" against my destiny. If I was a psycho there was nothing I could do about it, and since I knew I had some elements within me that could be exactly that. I felt my worst possible nightmare was coming true. (The disempowering nature of such testing and legislation is why I am very opposed to this branch of psychology)

That night I slipped into an horrible obsessive compulsive state of mind where I literally believed that i was about to get out of bed go down stairs, get a knife and do a psycho job on the Chinese guy who lived next door.

For anyone reading this who knows this state of mind - rest assured that the part of the brain that is experiencing OCD is completely different from the part that actually does things. You may believe you are about to do something but actually you must develop faith that it won't happen.

I didn't know this. It was terrifying. I eventually got to sleep but my brain was changed. I lived in the belief that i was a psycho from there on, on the verge of doing horrible things, and only my own self control stood between me and the pit.

Typically I tackled it rationally trying to take it all apart to understand where all this came from. I can explain some results here...

Consciousness while being a subject usually views other things as objects. That is the cause of all the problems in sin. Being sinless in Indian thought is undoing that dualism. In desire the subject seeks to consume the object. The more objectified (i.e. over there) the object is, the more desirable it is. In porn you may find this. The highest degree of objectification is what they call alterity. It is complete dualism between subject and object, where the subject divorces all responsibility for the object. It is the explanation for the treatment of Jews in the holocaust. In a sadistic experience this is what is happening, the Ego(subject, self) is extremely objectifying the object. The pleasure arises because the act of extreme objectification, is a tangible show of strength and solid existence for the now supersized subject. It revels in the glory of its conquering, while the poor object experiences utter destruction and rejection - and probably wondering why it was chosen for object in the first place! That is the chink in the Ego's armour - it forgot that it could only do this because it chose the object in the first place! an unfair battle, and meaningless victory. But the deluded self is a sucker for its own self flattery and justification. So there is lack of power within my mind which it tried to compensate for in sadistic movements.

Trouble is, OCD is another ball game and requires much bigger thinking than plain phenomenology. Don't do drugs if you have any mental weakness is the lesson here - or do drugs and find out if you have if you want! Omega-3 oils have made a hugely good impact, combined with positive thinking and faith that the mechanism of OCD is harmless. Falling in love also gets rid of OCD because the two work the same way. Obsession about an individual - sound familiar ;-) I became fish-vegetarian in 2000 at the same time as making the break from my muse, and that is where the OCD took over completely.

I would say I'm almost over all this now. It was Indian thought which saved me. The belief that the true-self is good. It is not the Freudian model of Id seeking to over-throw the influence of the Super-Ego on the Ego. Quite how I got stuck in that model as a teenager unawares of Freud is a mystery, or an illustration of the power of shared cultural narratives.

It is not that we don't have a lifetime of struggling against little evil impulses, but that the light at the end of the tunnel is a pure good self - rather than the hopeless pessimism of being a Damion in the Omen who is destined to evil. The difference between a saint and a sinner is that the saint never gives up trying. But don't try too hard because as Buddha points out a string snaps if tighted too much, and wont play if not tighted enough.

Freed from the idea that we can be "just evil" and that with effort we can rid ourselves of imperfections turned my thinking around. Instead of worrying and guarding myself, I opened myself up and faced the battle in the open. Were a negative impulse to occur I would close down, then when it had passed try and replace that negativity with a positive response. That way the mind is trained to experience positive instead of negative. That way we positively believe the mind gets closer to its true nature of positive goodness.

So this mind has been through some bad times and followed completely the wrong path many times, but it was worth it to - as Simon Le Bon once advised - "stay good" which is the only way to freedom, liberation and happiness.

Narrative & Psychology

In most psychology i imagine (not being a psychologist) that the object is to get a clear narrative for the patient. One that puts together all the confusing mental and physical elements in a way that enables them to be mentally collected and tidied away.

I consider my as-of-today-ex-girlfriend. In counseloring sessions recently she comes to reveal that she has low self-esteem began because her aunt valued her brother more than her. She was driven to become very jealous and competitive toward him, and after forming a respect for him then other people. She tackles the symptoms these days of that low self-esteem but has forgotten about it. She's told me this before.

The thing is tho my sister had the same thing with me. My grandmother never gave my sister a second look but doated on me. My sister has grown up to be more confident and successful than me and I just got complacent in the praise and never did anything.

The point is not then that the narrative does anything. Same narrative for different people achieves different results. Its that looking at the whole story we have a narrative of the person herself. It is a very useful tool to describe a personality, not directly, but through the way events have been dealt with by that personality.

So we know that my ex has a born tendency to feel undervalued. Having narrativised what she is however, and seen what narrative she would like to be, she can follow the new narrative and in so doing change those aspects of her intangible personality.

Well that's my defence case for Freud.

Pride

It occurred to me this morning that maybe "pride" is my biggest problem. I am certainly too proud to ever get what I want, and have always rejected that wanting, rather than be its slave.

This is useful because there are 2 types of desire then. There are the food like desires which are not very specific - we just need some food, maybe today, maybe tomorrow and we aren't too fussed what it is. These desires I don't fight because I know I can deny them forever if necessary and can chose when to satisfy them. I only ate a few sandwiches in the last 2 days, bit of hunger easy to cure, no problem.

The other type of desire is much more specific, especially desire for a person. This desire cannot be satisfied anytime and with anything, it is very specific. The thought of going into action in such a slavish and demanding way fills me with loathing - I am too proud to be a slave, even to my own deepest desires. Going into action to try and get my muse was the most un-natural and unhappy experience in a way, I would have so happily let her go. My first night after seeing her I was awake till morning tossing and turning in agony because I knew what lay ahead and I didn't really want it. "Theory of Forgetting" was the short essay I wrote to myself in the twilight of sunrise under the yellow sodium light streaming through my window in that London street - that I could only have this relationship when I had the strength to get rid of it. Finally that day is approaching - almost exactly 9 years too late!

I forget the film but a character comes out with a great line, "does a man chose what he wants?". We think we have freedom to chose, but actually we are driven by our desires which are the products of unseen hands of karma and causation. And we must obey those desires else we suffer. Imagine the freedom if we could chose whether to attend to a desire or not! But then of course that is the central issue of the blog - where would the meaning in life be if we really could chose NULL. Isn't that the central point of Buddhism to?

I am too proud to attend to my desires. I am too proud to bend my back and work slavishly for worldly wealth, or power, or even sexual satisfaction. As a child my family marvelled in the total lack of concern I had for things, never cried, never concerned that my mother was or was not there, just sat where I was put - little did they realise that my lack of tears as a child would become tears as an adult because I would painfully resist all these pressures to do things.

===

My lab partner just called and gave some input - he is wonderful actually, a great laugh and genuinely a help when it is needed. He wanted to know how I knew that he had stated spiritual practice again. It seems I just knew for no reason. He pointed out that, that was some kind of telepathy. I'm suddenly reminded of a past girlfriend who was empathic and what a nightmare that was for her because she couldn't tell whether feelings were hers or other peoples.
She'd get in such a mess trying to make sense of all these confusing emotions.

So then another narrative is that I'm an empath? The reason that I'm struggling with these relationships is that they are not my feelings. A girl likes me, I feel the feeling and then it feels almost like a job that I must respond. (That is how it feels). My inner response is there, lust, desire, love but I am loathed to do anything about it. Truely as I write and consider that all my loves may have been just "trips" or empathy I am filled with complete peace - this thing is no longer there to trouble me. My muse said of me that I reminded her of her hollywood pinup Mel Gibson (well she was only 17) she must have been excited by "seeing him", was I just getting her excitement?

There is one thought which disturbs the peace. I imagine my muse, 17, 18, 19 as she was when I knew her exploring her sexuality with some other man. I even met some of them. On the one hand so what. But there seems to be an inescapable question here, what did they experience that I have not experienced of this girl? Was it worth it? and wouldn't it have been worth me experiencing it. Now I'm disturbed again because I feel that "requirement" to act - as if I "should" have done something, that I let myself down, let her down, that I am somehow a reject for not having done something, a failure - as though there is some test here. But I am too proud to obey these external drives - what i want is peace and that means doing nothing.

"Why don't you sleep with her" I was once asked by a suitor. "Because there is more" I answered and tried to explain the beauty that was already there in my mind - I don't think either of us was convinced - he had slept with her then. What did they talk about? what did he know of her that I didn't? Why did he ask me? it makes me feel like I "should" have slept with her, but I am too proud to be raised into action by desires, only by will (which was at war with my desires then). It was torture, I have a broken hand from punching a letter box (ironic seeing as the whole relationship was done through these things).

They say the Pen-is mighter than the sword
But see the Penis far mightier than the word

I used to think to myself, is it true? When she was pursuing physical love it made me feel that I should have been doing that for her instead, but that was not peace, that was not the extraordinary beauty that was already in my mind.

So the question this morning - is this pride a good thing? or do I just give into desires. I satisfied myself with porn last night to test that, pure desire - it was quite depressing to lose all that energy, but it is true not fighting the desires makes for a more peaceful life.

The only problem though is what happens when strong desires arise again that need attending to...

just to add so this narrative does not explain however why I have been born with this desire to meet that girl, or one similar? (still don't know the difference). I do feel though that, that desire has been satisfied now.

Must love be two sided?

As already hinted I have had a lifelong fascination with the possibility of Platonic relationship. The idea that people can desire each other for who they are, rather than what they are and so express that desire in non-physical terms.

I discover today that my now departed muse may never have desired me physically. I'm sure there was something originally, but it was lost in the spiritual explorations.

However this raises the possibility that the spiritual relationship may have been more one sided two!

I remember an old girlfriend who got caught up on this problem twice. Firstly when she was on acid she kept asking me whether I was "on her trip" or on somebody elses trip. That experience on the wind swept remote sand dunes of Terschelling island, Netherlands, was very eye opening seeing the mind workings of 6 friends completely fall apart - I remained straight to check all went well. It made total sense because my mind began to fall apart with them - it is just that I remembered it all very well afterwards. "trip" was a word they started using meaningfully only after the acid came up. Each person was zoning out in their own unfolding stream of creative consciousness. What was bizarre was that trips kept crossing over when people talked so that halucinations would spread around the group, even I - the sober one - could see what they were talking about even though for me it was just an interpretation of visual data, rather than a convincing hallucination. People were calling people into their trips, and sometimes more fringe people would take a while to see what was being described. My girlfriend (as best as her spaced out consciousness could be) was very taken by this feature of her trip, unsure how it was hers and whether I was on her trip or not.


Exactly the same thing happened when we split up and I had to be honest with her I had never really loved her. That was destroying for her because she then had the experience that her love was a "trip" that I had not been on.

Well its karma isn't it because maybe this profound experience that has driven my last 9 years, and which I have waited my whole life for was actually just a "trip". I called to my muse to enter my trip but she didn't come, and so she became simply an object of fantasy and hallucination through which I could explore my own "trip" and mind.

Deep down I think I am actually happinest about this narrative because it means that there was no responsibility to her, there was no real connection, loss or gain, infact it may have been simply a powerful dream. Hmmm except I did know that something terrible was going to happen, and had happened... so there was some physical evidence for a connection. I am still to find out from her sister if there was any real connection. I knew we were very "good friends", I as a man am still to find out quite what that meant ;-)

Maybe I'm beginning to realise that for women at least it is the body which drives the mind, not the other way around. Irony there when it is men who are stereotyped by women as the physically obsessed sex... but of course that is simply women projecting their desires onto men ;-)

Someone who worked here had an even closer connection. He suddenly saw a girl he used to sleep with staring at him from the other side of the street. They had not met in years but he was sure it looked like her. He was with his wife so couldn't do anything, but she just stared and stared till he was gone. The next day he got a call that she had been killed the previous day in a bike accident.

So is love always a "trip" and does one initiate it and pull the other in, or is there destiny which brings people together from outside, or is it just luck that people have mutual desire which brings them together inside, or is it simply bloody hard work if that is what you want. I can say the last is not true alone because I have tried to make a relationship from scratch but without a starting spark nothing happens.

Amazing that after so much consideration the court is still out here. I'm clear on one thing - the narrative you use depends upon your mood! I'm just getting "out of love" with everyone I ever met, and so the "trip" theory seems quite good today. But I have only yesterday liked the destiny theory.

Self confidence

I realise that the solution to a giving relationship requires self confidence. To think that there is worth in giving oneself to someone means that we must value ourself. When we have strong desires for someone we tend to value them very much, obviously more than we value ourself - for whom we have no desire. This might be confusing at first because we cannot understand why someone would value having us, and so I imagine most relationships default to taking, where each partner simply takes what they want.

Maybe then as trust is developed in the relationship and people realise that they are valued by the partner both self-confidence increases and thoughts of giving replace thoughts of taking.

For me who is already concerned for giving the process then is greater self-confidence and understanding the mutual possibility of giving, and then embark on a loving relationship.

Destiny, Freedom & Narrative

Speeking informally to a councelor recently I asked him what his view on destiny was. His answer was very satisfying.

We have a life goal, a reason why we are here. We have complete freedom, but if we make choices which contradict that life goal the going gets very tough.

This fits very well with karma. We chose a rebirth to satisfy our deep desires. Fighting those desires as I have been apt to do makes life very hard and difficult. It is also futile because these desires originate deeper than "my" superficial self.

That there is no complete freedom is frustrating at first glance, but then it makes total sense. If we did have complete freedom then what reason is there to do anything? The causation of our existence is the reason we do what we do, it is what gives life its meaning. It is that meaning I have been lacking.

It occured are all destinies good. Hitler clearly had a massive destiny and he followed it, but he shouldn't have and should have struggled against it. So it seems that we do need to check where we are going and be prepared for the hard work of struggling against bad destinies.

The difficulties in life arise because we are going against karmas - some good , some bad - and we need to work on the difference. The councellor flavoured his view with the sense that karmas are what bring meaning to life, rather than just being mechanical causations from past actions. Further our lifes goal might even be encouraged and enforced by "spiritual entities" (left undefined). In many way what he said answered the key loss that I am writing this blog to discover - just what are we supposed to do with our "life".

From another perspective what this gives me is a narrative on life - a story with which to tie the events of the world together, a "raft" on which to sail the flow of existence as Buddha called his narratives in the Diamond Sutra.

Indeed this whole blog is one massive search for narratives, for stories with which to satisfy myself about the events of the world. Most recently the utterly shocking, meaningless and painful loss of my closest friend and only true love. It helps so much to narrativise it, to give me a raft with which to fight back against the great horrible demon Death. I need to add of course (but feel very bad for this piercing honesty) that even the idea that she was these wonderful things is another narrative to help me mediate the attractions and powerful life altering experience of knowing her.

I understand that in its purer phases Buddha's many teachings, his many raft to help beings struggling with the unfolding of life events - the ocean of suffering - become useless, that there comes a time when we no loger require stories to get through life.

I began reading a book the Kathasaritsagara soon after meeting this girl. She was Indian, the whole world was Indian for me after loving Indian food all my life (I'm English ;-) and having been stunned by Hindu and Buddhism teachings. That book name means "ocean of stories". I began to become a story teller for her in many letters, the story teller was Riswey. The ocean of stories made little sense at first. I read about Vidyadharas and thought that is what she must be - a narrative to help explain why she was so special. There was a beautiful passage which altered my thinking just as the text itself says - he gazed upon her and his mind was disturbed as the moons reflection on water. It reminds me in passing of something she once wrote of her back garden - the blades of grass struggling upward to be part of the expanse of green. One of the most perceptive and eye opening things I ever read. The stories are so fast paced, people lives sometimes coming and going in just a few sentences. The destinies and driving force behind the lives of the many people in the book is to meet and share their stories and so lives are intertwined ever more complexly as the endless stories unfold. I have begun to appreciate the vast scope of this book - the way our lives are short and briefly intertwined for no greater purpose that to make and share a story. That our endless journey of writing stories to remember the past, the lost, and to make sense of the present and the future is what makes life and time.

Maybe as "outcast" has been trying to say in the comments the time might come to stop narrativising and just let things be. On the other hand, if life and death is about stories then there can be no harm in telling some more. Maybe in future stories I might have something different to say.

And I want to add a problem I have had before. If life and death is a story, what is the difference between a true story and a fictional story?

As Robert Pirsig says in "Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle maintenance" - do the planets go around the sun because of the Laws of Physics, or are the Laws of Physics the way they are because the planets go around the sun. Well Maths is an extremely unusual story with many inner qualities quite unlike written stories - but in so far as they are telling a story that story has been molded to the planets - not the other way around. A true story is molded or plays a great part in the interaction of humans with the world. A fictional story plays a smaller role, but clearly a role. We can learn from myths and legends and much of what we believe helps us interact very successfully with the psychological level without it needing to be "true". The obvious question arises what is the "world" then, but that is another story ;-) (See Wittgenstein's later work for more on that.)

Sex & Death

A friend once pointed out the Jim Morrison lyrics - he touched her leg, and Death smiled. Don't you see he explained that because of mortality we are forced into reproduction to replace ourselves when we die. It was a brilliant observation and was the basis for a lot of thought that came later.

The space between the graves in a grave yard which enables them to be for different persons, is exactly the same force of distinction and separation which we call Death. Which can be expanded thus...

Kondanna's insight at Sarnath when Buddha first gave his 4 Noble Truths teaching, I understand to be, that every existent thing must also be temporary. In other words if something exists we know that it came from somewhere (it was created) and we know it goes somewhere (it will be destroyed). [the place where things come from and go to is often called the Void].

Things exist as separate entitied because they are "different" from one another - [this is Structuralist thought]. Differentiation is a feature of the mind. We teach kids to identify things, and to distinguish things they once thought were the same. All animals are called "dogs" at first until the child learns a new word and its distinction.

In meditation the process of differentiation is gradually stilled so that things are no longer separated. It does not mean they stick together in "one" either - there is just an absence of division. This "absence of division" or equanimity is the highest quality of our mind. Without division there is no longer Death! Things are neither seen as being created, nor destroyed and they are neither seen as being existing things either. This is also called the awareness of emptiness.

Death exists because we see people as separate entities. Thus individual entities are born, live and die. Ironically it is the distinction of individuals which also creates the basis for desire - where desire is need for something outside ourselves. And more ironically in sexual desire it is sexual difference which fuels the attraction. [In homosexuality where there is no sexual difference I cannot see how it can be "sexual" desire unless it is created in full awareness of the "other" sex but which rather than be attracted is rejected - Freudian?]. And as if biology was aware of the logic, sexual desire ironically leads to reproduction and the biological solution to impermanence and Death.

It is that biological solution to Death which worries me because sex and child birth occurs because of Death, it does overcome and defeat Death. It is very ironic that my current situation leaves me sexual frustrated and desperately missing a potential lover because I dared to try to overcome Death, but Death has instead raised its head and taken her away and shown me how powerless and futile I am.

It is tempting to transform my physical desires for her mortal being into spirtual desires for some immortal entity - as if she had joined the Earth mother, or become the bright silvery moon of which she was so fond, rising peacefully in her midnight blue ocean of sky - her favourite colour - but I am fearful that such fantasies are not real, are unhelpful and maybe even detrimental to her rebirth. I sort of relish the idea of being reborn to relive all this, but also am so guilty for having desires for someone who has been liberated from this life and should be free to attain whatever form she desires. It is so hard to accept what has happened, and to allow it to decay into the Void. Am still so struck by the awful ironies, that my feelings for her are a desire which is both caused by Death and which causes Death, but it is that Death which has taken away what those desires it created so wanted.

Desire really is suffering.

Sex & Spirit

I might have finally got this one clear.

I have always been afraid of losing my sense of respect or my love for someone in the sex act. The reason is that there is this temptation to be greedy and to take from the experience. In doing this they become an object of desire which is both appealing and morally intolerable. To avoid this risk I have always erred on platonic relationships with those I love to protect the spiritual component of relationships.

But it doesn't work because as I have discovered sexual desire does not just roll over and go away. There are levels of the experience which go light years beyond simple "wanting", getting rid of sexual desire is not as easy as getting rid of smoking. After 9 years I find I still have the complete kaleidoscope of unsatisfied desires toward my muse, things which I have been in a state of denial about all that time. Her passing on has awoken everything and thrown me straight back to the beginning.

I have made a resolution now not to be in denial about sexuality. It is something I must face and tackle fully. The mutual interaction between body and mind is something I have no choice but to mediate.

The key to the progress goes back to a small antique book shop in New Oxford Street. I remember finding this book of Chinese poetry and opening it finding a love poem. I read a section to the Chinese dance teacher I was accompanying that day. I forget the words but the meaning was this : the boy out of his love for the girl had the grace and virtue to offer her his body.

Sckeptics of love might scorn this apparently generous act as really just a selfish one. I think to some extent I did to. But last week having opened and examined the issue of sexuality again its real truth became apparent.

It is so obvious.

The fear I have had about objectifying a girl in the laser sights of sexual desire is quite rightly founded. I quick scan of pornography illustrates this predatory, objectifying mode perfectly. We are not encouraged to have loving feelings towards the girls in porn anyway - its name means the photographing of whores! But the solution is not platonic relationship as I have painfully been trying to achieve. It is what a hundred people have tried to explain to me before.

We can deny ourselves "sexual taking" from a partner as if it were a platonic relationship. This is the act of physical sacrifice associated with spiritual love. (I suppose the opposite for the true hedonist would be spiritual sacrifice in the name of physical attraction).

But we don't need to abstain from physical contact. Instead we can give our own physical existence to our partner in a sexual union.

Thus sexual energy is liberated (it being blocked is my personal crisis at the moment) but instead of being vacuously and very unsatisfyingly dissipated into space it is given to another. That giving of sexual energy I suspect now is the feeling of romantic love.

It all comes back to me now - the things I was working on. Sexual energy has many forms. Lying arm in arm with a partner and recycling ones breath with them can lead to the raising of spiritual energy to the heart. I think this is called the heart chakra etc. Physical sexuality and orgasm I have been told is linked to the base of the pelvis, so that kind of sexual activity lowers the sexual energy. I've only experienced the two - there are 6 I believe. Maybe I have a block in the throat, communication, chakra because when it comes to writing it never really works at the moment - altho the relationship with my muse was conducted almost entirely through writing and much sexual energy was given through that. She however still required the physical and that is where the pain set in - jealousy, misunderstanding, suspicion, feelings of inadequacy and eventually overwhelming sexual frustration but thankfully never anger or criticism. Hopefully all hidden from her when she was alive. I realise this week that giving her my physical body, had she accepted it, would have - if done right - enhanced the spiritual relationship. But since I didn't understand this then, just as well i didn't try.

So the conclusion for the future is not to outright reject expressing love through the physical, but rather see through the short term physical desires to the higher perspective of giving sexual energy at the level desired by the partner as both a gift to her and a sacrifice of oneself.

An obvious note: if the partner takes the sexual energy selfishly this is disappointing. Near the point of female orgasm I have always been disappointed at the distance between myself and the partner - maybe I have had the wrong partners - but it seems to be an internal experience for them. But if I think about it so is my orgasm a selfish internal experience...hmmm to be investigated