sea of uncertainty.

[everyday exploration of entropy and enlightenment]

awareness. entropy. impermanence. mindfulness. nothingness. time.

Tag: impermanence.

  • cylinder.

    His legs stretched out in the shade as he made more notes in his notebook, scribbles now filling up the margins, the only remaining space. Geometric constructions and complex algebraic equations created an impenetrably dense wall of knowledge, making his work visually off-putting to most. Today, as the midday sun bore down, a date palm delivered him shade, allowing him to work uninterrupted. A gentle breeze touched his cheek.

    As he scratched an itch on his side, he noticed his ribs were more pronounced—the past weeks, as he honed in on solutions for his work, has had neglected food and comfort; his work all-encompassing. Notebooks—stacks and stacks of them, as well as loose leaves of crumbled and folded paper, scattered all around his house—contained the synthesis and syncretism of ideas and theories from far-flung thinkers, old and new. Diagrams and schematics of geometries that warped the mind, graphs plotting exotic equations, mathematical alchemy and esoterica; theoretical threads he hoped to pull into answers, solutions to reality itself; as if that needed to be solved.

    He sat the notebook down softly beside him in the dry dirt, closed his eyes, and let out a sigh. The sigh evolved into a deep exhalation. Then an inhalation; the cycle repeating. And then again. He wasn’t sure exactly what drew him in, and back, to his childhood as an orphan at that monastery in the mountains. Remembering how the monks used to guide them in meditation, he crossed his legs and sat up straight. Decades receded in his mind—before his time as a renowned thinker, before his time as a young professor, before his time spent travelling to far-flung lands to study, before he left the monastery, before everything.

    Slowly he opened his eyes, his gaze drawn upward. Mouth agape, he saw the sky as a monumental rotating column, stretching as wide and tall as was possible in every direction. Slowly it turned, a towering cylinder of shimmering indigo iridescence, though at this moment he wasn’t sure how much he could trust his own perceptions. The very essence of existence was being projected onto the inner surface—people, houses, trees, himself—all mirages. A salty tear ran down his cheek. Overcome with awe and abject astonishment, he witnessed the geometry of his notebooks in motion, the two-dimensional informational base of all that is. More tears flowed as realisation set in—this was it, all there was. The bedrock of being was not something solid and enduring, the tombs of kings, but rather ephemeral and ethereal, flickering and fleeting. All that he—that anyone—had lived and breathed and died for, decried as fundamental and final, was nothing but conjurings from the surface of the cylinder.

    In the distance, plastered on the wall of the cylinder, he recognised a mountain formation from his youth; he hung his head. It was all an illusion—a hologram projected onto the consciousness. Hopes, dreams, fame, infamy; all phantasms of the great, cylindrical construction. He had nothing, was nothing. His face softened. He was free.

    Combs of cirrus clouds appeared on the column, before being projecting into the sky, then dissipated just as quickly.

  • there.

    The bright ruby sunrise made the horizon hard to identify, the red sky smudged with the red earth below. Several of the senior resident monks huddled together just outside the monastery’s entrance—a thick whitewashed gatehouse, framing heavy, ornately carved, impregnable wooden doors—before bowing in unison in gratitude and bidding him farewell. The heavy doors sealed shut behind them. He picked up the woven rattan basket at his feet, then adjusted the tumpline on his head. The contents of the basket were invaluable—manuscripts and scrolls, wisdom and teachings from a past long gone. Despite the early morning hours, the air already sizzled, the baked landscape preparing for another hot day. Enveloped and wrapped solely in a long length of white cotton cloth to ward off the elements, he pulled a hem down over his forehead, shielding his eyes from the scorching sun.

    He took a first step, then another. The first of many. The road—more of an unpaved track—stretched is a straight line all the way to the sky, a rarely travelled line bisecting the undisturbed crimson. Almost immediately his waraji straw sandals became covered in sprinklings of ochre earth. Due to the sparse population in the area—a few camel herders and nomadic families—there would be no inns or caravanserai on his way; so the rattan basket also contained parcels of cooked rice and a gourd of water. Whether it was to be enough for the journey remained to be seen, but it would have to be.

    Each day blended into the prior, as one breath into another—a concertina of chronology, the elasticity of experience, the illusions of the linear. The resident monks had informed him the journey to the next monastery would take five or six days; so he was in no hurry. Things would unfold as they will. Above he saw a formation of cranes, and smiled—he empathised with their hunger, having probably not eaten for weeks as they complete their annual migratory mission. He also noticed a new found nimbleness to his steps; buoyed by witnessing the resilience of the crane, he found a new reservoir of endurance to plumb.

    His stomach growled—primarily in hunger, but also in anger—demanding more than the meagre rice rations he had been providing it once a day. Sitting in the discomfort, his well-attuned awareness acknowledged these grumblings and growlings were only temporary sensations, and would not be fatal; at least during this journey.

    The next day—sometime before noon, based on where the Sun was hanging overhead—he saw a shimmering in the distance. The distinctive sparkling of the whitewashed walls of a monastery.

    Knowing there were only a handful of humble monks cloistered at the isolated monastery—not the one thousand or so housed at the one he had journeyed from—and knowing they might be preoccupied, he sat. And waited. He meditated and absorbed the here and now. Though, in the now, ‘here’ ceases to have much meaning–there is no ‘there’ for it to contrast with; in the present, ‘there’ can only ever be ‘here’. A crane called far above.

  • wisps.

    Clouds of wisteria and jasmine clung to the small cottage, like a mountain peak cloaked in fog. Along horizontal parallel beams the climbers crawled—the low pitch of the roof also luring them higher—bringing with them the scent of Spring and bees eager to harvest the fresh pollen on offer. Delicately, she placed the incense holder on the table; there was a barely audible dink as the clay base reached the table top. It was of simple design; a clay circle, with a small opening in the centre, to which the incense stick would be stuffed. Using her left hand, she ran her fingertips up the vertical incense stick until she reached its length. The miniscule bumps and contours confirmed its handmade, hand-rolled provenience. Her right hand held an open flame—a piece of paper alight—and she gently brought this to the end of the incense. A huuft signaled the fire had done its job, and soon wafts of sandalwood wound their way towards the ceiling, drifting and dancing on the breeze allowed by the many open windows of the house.

    Her sight might have corroded, but her sense of smell had not. She picked up scents of the sandalwood, along with botanicals the artisan had included in its creation; notably mixed with the bouquet of the resident climbers outside. She strained her memory, trying to recall it as she had seen as a child; surely these soft scents were riding the waves of wisps emanating from the incense stick—or at least as she recalled it.

    How many—she would never know for certain—of her memories had become mis-remembers, reliable lies, unable to be validated by vision of the now? The memory of the scent would endure longer than the event, though forever through the warped lens of memory. Surely this was true of all of us, she thought; removed from time and place, we still yet claim knowledge based on poorly transcribed notes jotted on worn parchment of the mind.

    She sat on a cushion next to a large window. Tilting her head to experience the breeze on her cheeks, a subtle symbol of the Spring blooming beyond the borders of the room. All she knew was right now—not reliant on faded falsities—was she could smell the wonderful aroma of sandalwood, sublimating with the scent of wisteria from outside the ajar window. With a ffift, the incense stick burned out, extinguished.

  • incantation.

    Yet-to-be thought,

    mindfulness in nought.

    Sit in the unknown,

    before bliss has flown.

    The moment we decide,

    peace we deride.

    Inside concepts and ideas,

    we find egos and fears.

    A breath, a pause,

    delays thinking’s maws.

    Vacuous fluctuation,

    total deconstruction,

    multidimensional incantation.

  • tide.

    Like a prize Persian rug, resplendent threads of azure and cobalt stretches the breadth of both the horizon and the imagination, twinkling like lapis lazuli and sapphire under the hot Summer sun. Every day, the ocean is here; yet every day, she reveals a different facet, different angle to her beauty, to those curious ones paying attention. Infinite, yet formless and forever changing, the sea serves as an enduring reminder to the constant churn of change. Swells form, only to collapse; tides rise, only to fall.

    Shear stoic cliffs of ancient rock stand as sentinels at each end of the beach, shepherding the swells around the headlands. While not in frequent flux as the ocean far below, the old faces still show the scars of an endless battle with the elements. Deep crevices are torturously, methodically, carved into the rock over millennia—death by a thousand cuts of the wind and waves, lingchi by weathering. Stories of old recall old rock formations and old fishing spots and old blowholes, though now lost to the current inhabitants—new ones have emerged, though no doubt only to be a memory again in a generation or three.

    Beyond the blue rug and above the worn faces, the night sky moves in timescales beyond the human mind. Machinations and geometries shuffling and jostling over lifetimes, aeons. Fathers to sons, mothers to daughters, can only reflect knowledge of stagnant stars; it is curious grandchildren, enthralled by parchment and papyrus, scrolls and zij, that peer far back enough in time, that glimpse the changes. Yet change they do. Slowly. Surely. Galaxies grow before growing apart, stars shine and are then snuffed out, gravity wears and warps; but only to observant gods.

    Tonight, a full moon—an opal hoisted in the deep black—casts a pale glow, bathing all beneath in chalky shades. The frigid ocean water stings a little as the waves wash up the beach, engulfing her feet before retreating again, as it always does. She knew her feet would warm up—or at least become accustomed to the temperature—in a few minutes, as they always do. Thoughts appeared to her, only to wash away like the tide, as they always do.

  • welcome.

    He paused briefly at the door, the sight of a banana sapling to his left bringing a smile to his old wizened face. Originally a gift from a recently deceased loved one, the plant was relishing the rains and thick humidity—with this new growth, his loved one continued to live on, even if in another form. After soaking up a vision of her face in his mind’s eye, he pushed on the heavy wooden door, the loud creaking signalling his arrival to the no-one inside.

    The cabin was Spartan, the utmost utilitarian—more of a hut than a home. He himself had felled the trees that formed the shiplap walls, now pale and silvered after decades of exposure to the elements. Save a well-worn rug of faded teals and turquoises, its tassels hoping against hope in the battle against decay, and a black circular meditation cushion sitting squarely in the centre of said rug, the single room was empty. To each of the three large windows we shuffled and pushed them open—though initially they resisted his efforts; the swollen window frames gripped more firmly in the damper months.

    Slowly he lowered himself down onto the cushion, assuming the lotus pose—a shape his body knew intimately, one his knees, hips, and spine knew by rote.

    A single thought: “Welcome.”

    Every thought, every feeling, every visitor was welcome. After all, it was not he who summoned them nor was it his place to banish them. Arising unannounced from the void, from the pristine pre-thought vacuum, he would accept them as they came, for they are nothing more than wind blowing through the trees.

    A thunderclap announced itself as a harbinger of a distant storm ruminating in the humidity. Another smile appeared on his face.

    *(The above is inspired by an Ajahn Chah quote.)

  • deathless.

    The desert sun was unrelenting. Though he didn’t find it oppressive or unbearable—this was his home after all—each successive footfall felt more leaden that the last, the hunger and thirst sapping what was left of his strength. As if to spite his chapped lips, his mouth salivated as he conjured up his last meal from his memory; succulent meat with some dried fruits, all washed down with some local firewater, followed by a palette cleanse of crisp clear water plucked from the nearby stream.

    The meal was a deliberate choice—a favourite, just one last time—and though tears were shed for his upcoming departure, there were also many bouts of laughter, brought on by fond memories and the exaggerations of elaborate storytelling. Before dawn the following morning, he slipped out the door. He had no need for any possessions other than the clothes on his back where he was going. These last couple of years, old age had seemed to weigh heavier on him—his eyesight had worsened, his body more frail, climbing hills he had previously strode up easily now sucked the breath from his lungs. His time was near, and he knew it was time to go.

    Despite now three days of non-stop walking, if there was one thing he still had in abundance, it was endurance. The scorching sands warmed his soles. At this time of the year, he would usually travel at night to avoid the worst of the heat, though now he so desired to experience the sun, witness the azure sky, the wisps of clouds languid overhead. Hour after hour he kept a steady pace, pausing only every now and then to admire the pristine desert landscape—its crimson and ochre otherworldly rock formations, coarse beige sand, clusters of straggly and spiky bushes, blue sky so vast it resembled an inverted ocean. With moonrise, he lay down to rest; he was in awe at both the beauty and the boundlessness of the night sky.

    Several days later, he crested the ridge. It was much like he remembered, though with maybe a few more straggly and spiky bushes, and as he slowly raised his gaze, he saw it—the infinite ocean. Stretching all the way to where it meets the setting sun. This was the perfect spot; he longed to hear the waves rush up on the beach, washing away his thoughts, drowning him in mindfulness. Just him, and the waves, and the moment. Or perhaps, just the moment.

    Navigating a narrow track, he wound his way down from the ridge to the shore. The sun was slung low in the late afternoon, casting long shadows on the arid hills. Folding his legs up he sat quietly on the sand, just out of reach of the waves that crashed in, propelled by energies harnessed far out to sea. He let his mind wander. It invariably turned to what dim memories still remained. He pondered how moments of his life—both the profound and the mundane—might have been different if he went left instead of right, said yes instead of no. He concluded it didn’t matter anyway; these ‘what ifs’ were like sea mist on the hills, no more solid that the memories triggering the thoughts in the first place. And besides, there were many threads of these potential lives of his—all the ‘maybes’—that were cut short much before the age he was now. He was in no position—no one was—to evaluate what is better or worse over the length of a lifetime, the infinite strands of cause and effect much too interwoven for the human mind to unravel.

    It was in this moment he realised that time can only exist through change—without change, there is no time. Without thought, there is no cognitive compulsion to measure; without measurement, there is no change to mark time. Mindfulness is timelessness, a deathless death itself. It seemed to him that a sliver of awareness between thoughts could live the lifetimes of the stars above.

    His eyes grew heavy, both with physical exhaustion and hunger-induced fatigue. As his eyelids flickered—reminiscent of the flickering stars above—he smiled in a moment of contentment, suspended in the deathless death. And then his eyes closed for the last time.

    The sound of waves charging up on the steep beach echoed in the evening air.

  • solution.

    “Have you tried…ahhh…exhaling about it?”

  • settle.

    Using an old chipped glass that no one would notice if it got broken, she hunched down and scooped some water out of the pond. The reeds and raupō, algae, water lilies and lotuses had created a thriving aquatic ecosystem. Given the frequency and volume of croaks she had been hearing in the evening, she was sure she’d find a tadpole in the glass of scooped-up water. Back in the kitchen, with two small hands she gently placed the glass on the bench of well-worn hand-hewn oak, and stared intently. The water was murky—brown, silty, and too dirty to see if there were any tadpoles within—but she waited. Throughout the afternoon, in between chasing butterflies among the wildflowers and watching the sparrows search for worms, she returned eagerly to the glass, to see what, if any, secrets it had given up. As the sun sank lower and lower, she discovered the water began to become clearer and clearer as the sediments began to sink, overcome slowly by gravity.

    Let the silt settle.

    And the glass became less opaque, less secretive, revealing the mysteries of the brackish water, it became evidently clear that there was no tadpole contained within. A frown, followed by a pout, overtook her usually inquisitive face. Certainty—in our beliefs, in our interpretations, in our actions, in the interpretation of others’ actions—is an illusion, a mirage of inference and a desire for safety; as the uncertain, the unknown, hides potential danger. Thinking we understand a situation fully, that we know through our murky thoughts, is at best naive while at worst hubristic.

    Let the silt settle.

    In the same way that dirty water can become clear if the particulates are left to settle, so too the mind can gain clarity if we can just observe in presence; there is no imperative to pull on the thread of a thought, to do anything with it. Allow the unknowable void—the infinite potentiate of mushin—to percolate thoughts without agitating the silt.

    Let the silt settle.

  • vessel.

    Old frail fingers raise a tea cup to the weak light of the morning—a bony tripod, fingertips tenderly rotating the vessel; all the better to admire the colours, cracks, patina. The worn and wabi sabi in all of its perfect, imperfect beauty. Chips and cracks call to mind memories and stories, while patches of buffed glaze highlight preferences, familiar spots of fingers and palms. Black lacquer a mirror to the morning light, slicing as it was through the crisp air. It could be said that many things define the tea cup—both this one, and all cups. Material, colour, shape, texture… Consider for a moment, however, what it is not. It is not solid. Arguably, a feature of all vessels is their hollowness, their utility tied to their ability to be filled, to hold myriad liquids or trinkets, materials or miscellanea. Similarly, one measure of a mind is its ability to hold things; ideas and intricacies, patterns and possibilities. And of all of Nature’s vessels, the mind has the ability to hold the greatest variety of things—the number and scope of which are limited only by imagination.

    The grassy notes of green tea fill the air, a laminar flow of hot tea connects teapot to tea cup. After the cup is completely filled—not one drop more able to be balanced on top—the worn hands set the teapot down, gently and with reverence. A vessel that is not empty is no longer a vessel—it has become a storage apparatus. Unable to be filled, it has abandoned its function. A full mind is like a full tea cup—unable to hold anything more, unable to function as a vessel, unable to function as a mind. A vessel must be emptied, as is its purpose.

    After taking one long sip, downing the hot fragrant tea in one mouthful, the lacquered cup was set down gently on a heavy wooden table. An empty vessel is also the epitome of potential, of almost countless possibilities, being able to hold whatever is found across the breadth of time and space. Potential in its emptiness. So, too, an empty mind—the shimmering radiance of the Sun reflecting around in an old ceramic glaze.