Don’t give up, kids, don’t give up

Before hitting the streets of New York I went to the top floor of my hotel for a swim and briefly observed a scene that remained in my head and in my heart; a young mother brought her 5-year-or-so old child to the pool and attempted to make him go into the water with the hotel swimming coach, a young lady. Boy was holding his mother’s leg and wouldn’t let go, quietly crying, with a sorrowful face. Both ladies were trying to persuade him, with unbelievably stereotypical sentences: “C’mon now, you are a big boy and big boys don’t cry. You don’t want to make your mummy sad, do you? Don’t cause problems like you did yesterday. If you stop crying and behave your mummy will buy you an ice cream afterwards, and you do like ice cream, don’t you…”

None of the three was happy and they all tried their best. Ladies tried to change the little boy, to fix him, to straighten him up and have him do what they wanted him to do. And the boy tried to emotionally survive. And it was obvious he did not stand much chance.

Later, while thinking about the scene, it struck me how nobody seemed to care why this little human being was crying. None of them seemed to even think that there might have been a reason for his tears, that perhaps there were some real human emotions and needs behind it all. It seems to me the little boy was feeling afraid, insecure, confused, needing safety, reassurance, connection, some more time to make gradual steps into the unknown…

Now of course, if you look from the rational perspective, it is not such a big deal, come on, mummy wants to take this little kid to a nice swimming pool to have some fun with the swimming coach, what’s so dramatic about this? But if I look with my heart it seems to me so very sad; this little human being, this little vulnerable boy in the big wild world, being pushed here and there in this life too-big-to-handle, all the time being corrected and told what to do and persuaded into doing what grown ups want him to do, to be. With not much power to stand for his own choice, needs, values…

When grown ups decide there is absolutely no reason to cry, children must stop crying. When parents choose to not give even one little minute of empathy to their kids, they need to stop feeling their feelings, stop needing their needs, because there is absolutely no logical reason for having them, right? The feelings, the needs, the values of children are seen as less important, of a lesser value.

What a difficult world children must cope with.

And so they become good, obedient, nice, clean, perfect, sweet, shaped just according to the framework set by their egocentric parents. After some thirty years or so they will start seeing a psychotherapist or attend personal growth workshops in order to climb out of these fixed attitudes that will be by then already fully integrated into their personalities, they will strive to grow out of the automatic role they have adopted in order to emotionally survive…, and they will start to get in touch with who and what they really are.

What a world, my friends, what a world.

Just an ordinary guy

The extent to which we tend to be concerned with our own image, trying to place ourselves and our own worth somewhere on the scale, the amount of attention and energy we dedicate to the impression management, self-promotion…, it all seems pretty ridiculous to me. There are so many other things to worry about in this world of ours.

The tiny little good news – in regards to my tiny little unimportant existence – is that, as it seems to me, lately there has been less urge or even tendency to polish my self image and worry about it at all. To a great deal of relief, because the thing used to be darn exhausting. I used to really cherish this sweet hidden idea that I am special, very special. And that the world yet needs to recognize this. I remember the first cracks on this shiny little devil started with some heavy blows on my thick head long time ago, a sort of waking-up experiences.

One that I really love to remember and still find incredibly funny happened on my first trip to India. I went there, at the age of 20, for the enlightenment and total liberation, of course. I guess thousands of people went to India with the same goal. So, I was not so very special in this regard, but I did like the thought that I would definitely be the one who will actually attain enlightenment, not like the rest of losers who came home humiliated.

So, there I was in a search of a guru. I visited many and was not satisfied (this already sounds pretty stupid, doesn’t it?) and finally learned about a wise man in a small village up north in Uttar Pradesh, where the Himalayas begin. On my first visit to the village, despite the intense search, I did not find the man. I thought this actually was a good spiritual sign, showing that the path to enlightenment was damn thorny. I loved it. I felt I was ready for any sort of sacrifices, I believed I was ready to face all the tortures needed for the liberation, with a blessed smile of Buddha on my smart face.

Next week, after gathering more info, I returned to the village and finally found him; he was a simple, kind, shiny, skinny old man, with soft eyes, white beard and soft voice. Just what I was looking for. He looked just like Ramana Maharshi and I believed this was the perfect sign. He did not make a big fuzz about himself or his teachings, but invited me to come back in the afternoon, to his home, and to meditate a bit with his friends. I learned later that he did not call anybody a disciple or a student, but just simple friends with whom he liked to meditate. Another good sign for me. He modestly asked me whether I was able to sit down on the floor and meditate for a while and was then overwhelmed with my self-promotion about how well experienced in meditation I was, how I loved to meditate and so forth.

So, I came back later that afternoon and we all sat down, about 6 or so of us, in this little meditation room. The old man lit a candle, explained the form of meditation he was inviting me to practice, and just before we closed our eyes he said that I did not need to worry about time at all since he was going to announce the end of the meditation with a bell, after 4 hours.

What??????? Four hours? Four hours of sitting in lotus, not moving, just meditating?

I did manage to maintain the enlightened smile of a Buddha, but my mind exploded. I never ever did more than 40 minutes in a row, and here I was, on bare concrete floor, with this weird man and his weird friends, to sit for four hours???

It was a 4-hour-torture, to my body as well as to my mind. I did manage to maintain my image, my dignity, my ego, but that was definitely not a meditation.

So, the horrible 4 hours passed, the little bell rung, I slowly started to stretch my burning legs, atempting to preserve my blessed smile. And the old man, with some curious sparks in his eyes and a tiny smile on his face, turned to me and said: “I apologize for being so short with time today and so we were only able to do this much. But tomorrow you are invited to come at 8 in the morning and we will do a longer and more deep meditation, I was thinking about doing an eight-hour stretch.”

This time I was ready and I did not blink: “Great, I will be delighted to come, thank you for inviting me.” I had a plan in my mind already (I had plenty of time in the past four hours to develop a plan, you see) and next morning I caught the first bus out of the village, before 6 AM and oh, boy, was I happy to be on that bus. I did save what was left of my dignity by not showing up, well, sort of, , but my self image was not idealized anymore. Reality started to knock on the door.

So, it indeed is a relief to notice, after a couple of decades, to be less burdened by my own image, not evaluating or comparing myself with others too much anymore, in other words, not taking myself too seriously.

This indeed is how I understand the concept of personal growth: not necessarily seeing chakras all over the place and remembering past lives, but acting out the role of a victim less and be fully responsible in relationships, being aware of my own very human needs, humbly being aware of my own limitations, developing genuine empathy for other people’s needs, overcoming fear of stepping into the unknown… simple things like that.

So, perhaps the fact that I don’t think anymore that I am anything special and the fact that I almost don’t spend any time in front of the mirror – perhaps this is a sign of some improvements.

The connecting void of silence

By now I already got used to the fact that after a Soto Zen Seshin I come home with nothing to say – which I find really grand. And once again I am utterly fascinated by the process of just sitting in the moment – for days – with no goal, no meaning, no agenda, no plan, nothing that my mind is dependent on having around all the time. Just sheer presence in the moment. Although my lower back did not quite appreciate how long this moment was.

There’s yet another fascination I was feeling and am still carrying within me – namely the enthralment with the magic of silence. For three full days I was sitting in the same room with about 50 people in complete silence – and I believe this silence has connected us more than any words could have. The man that was sitting on my left and the lad on my right – somehow an intimate relationship evolved among us, though we never uttered a word with each other or even made eye contact. Yet this contact of ours was so sincere and open – I knew when they were having hard time with either their knees or with trying to stay awake, and I know they were aware of my tough moments. And we understood each other so damn well.

The time when people just sit together in silence holds such a deep magic for me. I remember last year on the Dialogue training (hey, there’s another one coming just next week – hurray) on one occasion a spontaneous silence happened and we were sitting there, in a circle and full interpersonal contact, for about half an hour. No need to say or do something, no urge to fill the emptiness with anything, nothing of this sorts at all. It just felt the most natural and right thing to do. Nothing was missing, everything was perfect.

Same things often happen in erotic relationships, don’t they? There comes this silence and the deep connection along. Any word would just spoil it all.

So I am thinking right now that perhaps the real contact lies in the silence, while the words are mostly a disconnecting modus of communication, the one that perhaps even deepens the gap, no matter what we say, because every word always travels through so many conscious and subconscious filters before it finally gets uttered. Perhaps somewhere beyond verbal communication there lies something deeper, more subtler yet more true, genuine and intense, something that we have a long time ago lost touch with. Something that we manage to grasp only occasionally, by an accident.

Sadly.

The beautiful dilemmas of life

The other day in New York City I was talking with a friend of mine about possible reasons for such a strong need in humans for an ideology – a religion, a philosophy, a new-age system and alike. Why is there always a seemingly endless queue of happy customers for just about any possible type of ideology?

Then it dawned on me – since the purpose of ideologies is to help us make some sense of the world, they offer us a model of the world and provide us with answers. This way they seemingly take the dilemmas away, especially these existential dilemmas, the most annoying ones. You know, the big four existential dilemmas about freedom/responsibility, death, isolation and meaninglessness.

Yes, this is what an ideology does – if you go for one, you are suddenly provided with all the answers, about life, death, future, nature of things, nature of yourself… Everything is suddenly clear, you have gotten rid of the stressful and frightening dilemmas and you are fine. As long as you stick to these answers you are safe, you will not be disturbed, you will have the comforting feeling that you know what your life is all about. It’s like a drug, isn’t it? Creating an illusion that your existence has no unknown realms, everything has been explored, there’s nothing to be afraid of, everything is clear. Just don’t forget to give some donation on your way out of the temple. And make sure you don’t ever question the provided universal answers.

This may be the reason why I find it so hard to communicate with people who belong to religious or new-age ideologies – whenever I express a dilemma of mine (like, oh, I am really wandering about the purpose of what I am doing in my life, for instance) they instantaneously jump with an answer (yes, but but but you must, you have to, it is like this, it is like that…).

I guess it all has to do with the ability to face and live with the unknown. To face the fact that there are and will always be these existential dilemmas around in our lives and they will not be ultimately answered – until the moment of death at least. Because all the possible insights into the nature of our existence are inherently embedded in so many contexts that they cannot ever be reliable. Yes, letting go of the illusion of knowing and sinking back into the humble role of ignorant explorer can be frightening. But you get used to it and start using the sentence: “I don’t know” more often again. Perhaps this is what Suzuki meant when he said that the true goal of Zen practice is always to keep our beginner’s mind, since only the beginner’s mind, the mind of the not-knower is free of self-centeredness and involves true openness to the complexity of existence. Tomorrow I am leaving for a Zen seshin retreat and I will have plenty of time to climb another few rungs out of the illusion that I know anything at all, and explore the beginner’s mind.