Monday, February 13, 2012

Return from a Zen world

There goes a parable about a man from the west visiting a Chinese Zen master for learning about his discipline - or in easier English, to become a disciple - and the ZM offering him a cup of tea, where he (ZM) goes on pouring tea into the cup beyond its brim and the tea starts pouring out of the cup, on seeing which the occidental man exclaims, "The cup is full; no more will go in!," to which the ZM replies, "Like this cup you are full of your opinions and speculations. How can i show you Zen until you first empty your cup?"

My Zen has been a more twisted affair - my cup has been emptied through and out too many times in the past few weeks. All the wrong moments, arguably. Even emptied when half-full, even emptied when empty. That is what immoderation brings. Multi-modal ruin, life and death in their myriad manifestations.
They call it my eagerness to die, I call it my eagerness to live. But come to see this aspect: that living is defined by an eagerness to die, and death is defined by an eagerness to live... without the acknowledgement of their contradictions, our absolutes are orphans, which often lead into ironies. This eagerness has left me with a short-term hook into several aspects of life, as could be reasonably expected of a single isolated 26-year-old boy. Adventures begin with smaller dimensions - I could satiate myself with that - and there will be a lot more in the road ahead. Probably some gang of corrupt women waving me a banner, topless at the sidelines.

Only on paper do I come to these analytic phases of my own life. Its much easier (and mirth-evoking) to analyse the lives of others. How absurd: to know oneself too well to summarise things at these junctions in life, and yet end up doing it. That is one sad thing a relationship with paper, on paper, brings. Admittedly, one is slow if (s)he gains wisdom from staring too long into papyrus, but in defense of "humanity", 'everybody grows up with it'.

Howmuchsoever I despise seeing myself on paper, it is better than not seeing oneself at all. My Rishikesh brethren contest that when we claim to see ourselves in the mirror its merely our reflection that we learn about. But they will agree to some level that even our reflection (in abstract sense) is important to us incomplete (pieces of a puzzle). Speaking both in figurative and literal terms, on trek that I returned from left me with a reflection of myself, one that I can see and analyse in my times of death. As intent as I have been in pursuit of the uniqueness of the experience, this one tops.
["Maximum fansgirls!," to quote Bruno]

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