The Awakening

Notes about the self : IX

 

 

 

 

 

When someone leaves a glass too close to the edge of the table, the man viewing it goes through a gamut of emotions sensing what's going to happen next. Its the moment … its the scar on the knee when you fell off the bike, its the yank on the tooth by the dentist, the jab during the cholera outbreak or when you decided to end the marriage of so many years. Its a decision that takes place by itself.

 

In my student days I had grappled with the epistemology of my understanding and made some clear decisions later about my choices for a life of learning the human condition. All that is now clear to my mind on the issues.

 

In these last few days I figure I had come to the last thorn in the flesh. A kid with a bruise will open up to let you take a look and apply some medication but not before suddenly changing his mind about letting you near. A wounded animal may even attack the healer.

 

We are all trained to rush to the defense of that in us which we know is weak and cannot withstand an exposure to the inevitable. Its almost second nature with us. To stop supporting a convenient truth, we have to simply … stop. It is deliberate, willful and undertaken with conscious intent.

 

In all the great classics ever written such a moment when we let go and are transformed is brought into highlight in some way. Hercules slew the hydra … King Indra of the Rig-veda smashed the rocks and released the waters. In a translation of these in our present lives we encounter something entirely new that is not unlike past events of the legends. But we'll never quite know what it is in fact until it happens.

 

In Zen a person would find the closest possible description of such an experience. ' I felt the impulse to stay in quietude and silenced my thoughts … it was as if a door had opened  … suddenly I entered … I saw every man coming to me as myself. It was as if I had lost the boundary of my skin. No individual Mr. Sasaki ever existed.'

 

I had a quiet one myself yesterday. I experienced a consternation like you won't believe but its settling down. It produced a shock that made me cough and sneeze. 24 hours later its worked into a mild infection. I need to get a soup.