Posts Tagged ‘perspective’

I may be completely unenlightened, and therefore have no idea what I am talking about, but to me enlightenment is not an event but rather, it’s a place.

By this I mean it’s not (in my opinion, unqualified by any particular dogma) something that just happens and then that’s it – you’re enlightened for the rest of your life.

For me it’s somewhere you have to make the effort to go (although sometimes you stumble upon it without trying, like walking out of the trees into an unexpected clearing in a forest).

And like all visits, you sit, maybe drink some tea, enjoy – but then you have to leave, already looking forward to your next visit.

Usually, I travel to this delightful place by meditation, and it can be a bumpy ride getting there. Sometimes I run out of time and steam and have to turn back without reaching the destination. Usually, if I keep steadfastly on, I get there eventually.

I used to go to this place a lot but over the last year or two I have rarely made the effort or found the time to visit this place.

I think this is ok (I had things to do) but it is not sustainable and the price is always increased feelings of negativity and decreased well-being. Recently I have had to admit to myself that this has been reaching a quiet kind of crisis point and I have really needed to get back on my chair and meditate. Thankfully, my trusty old steed is still happy to bear my load.

Maybe this is also what is meant by “returning to the breath”?

By Seamus Anthony

By Seamus Anthony

Now that I have made the commitment to blogging here again, I have been pondering what this blog is actually about. To start with it was about “personal development”, “self-improvement” and “success” but I have never felt comfortable with any of these labels whatsoever.

I think I prefer to decide that this blog is about “Meaning”.

Why? Because that’s what we all need and crave in this life – Meaning – and big time.

It is my humble opinion that all of human activity, everything we do, is shaped and coloured by the fact that we are given life, wonder “why?”, get no answer and then have to die. This shaky sequence of events, facts and mystery is the foundation on which the entire human condition is built.

But Why?

The thing that sets us apart from the animals, as far as we know, is that we hit the age of 2 or 3 and suddenly we wonder: “Why?”

It’s like – all this stuff exists … ok … got my head around that …

… but why?

Why does it exist? Why is my Mummy so tall? Why am I eating potatoes? Why does the dog have black hair with a white stripe on his nose?

In fact (can you tell I have a 2.5 year old kid?) it is very interesting to follow the train of thought of a toddler and discover in this, the entire problem of “being human” – we just don’t know what it all means. (Some people think they do of course, but they have no precise way to verify their beliefs about meaning so it cannot be denied that they are anything more than conjecture.)

Here’s a hypothetical discussion with my 2 year old:

Daddy what are you doing?

I am working.

But why?

Because we need money.

But why?

Because if we don’t have money then we can’t buy food or clothes or toys.

But why?

Because this is the system that is set up, it’s called Capitalism.

But why?

Well, truly, I don’t know why Capitalism exists, probably because of all the systems they have tried, it is the one that seems to work, albeit far from perfectly.

But why?

Dunno – maybe because it is the system that most honestly addresses and mirrors human nature.

But why?

Because humans are by nature very concerned with getting things, with survival and with the pursuit of pleasure.

But why?

Because that’s how our brains are wired up – we chase pleasure and avoid pain and do our damndest to survive.

But why?

Because that’s just what animals do and we are animals.

But why?

But why are we animals? Well … because we just are. Nobody knows the answer to that question.

But why?

Because when you ask the question, you’ll never get an answer.

But why?

You’ll never know why you never get an answer to this either. We do not truly know why we exist and we never get an answer when we ask the question. It’s just a big, big mystery.

I wonder if you started with any question whether it would always come down to the eternal question that every human must ask and never get an answer to: Why?

So I guess that’s what this blog is about – it’s about the eternal, fruitless search for Meaning (yes, with a capital M) and what to do about that.

It’s not really about trying to sell you on an answer – because there is none. Rather, this blog is about finding ideas and ways to cope with the absence of Meaning, and to connect with others along the way – so please, drop me a line and say G’day!

By Seamus Anthony

What follows is the massively-inspired, half-drunk process of me trying to finally define what “Rebel Zen” means in a slogan …

Rebel Zen: It’s not about being perfect – it’s about being alive.

or

Exploring what it means to be alive…

or maybe

Exploring what it means to be human…

or

… and the Glorious Art of Being Imperfect

Yes! That’s it!

Rebel Zen and the Glorious Art of Being Imperfect!

‘Cos to me that is the point – it is about what it means to be a human – warts and all.

What it feels like to be alive; the search for meaning, for authenticity, what it feels like.

The very thing artists strive to express – musicians, poets, madmen.

Forsaking fantasies of perfection – Zen as in “being here now”, whether that feels good or not.

What it feels like to be a human being, with all the inherent imperfection and beauty and baggage that comes part-and-parcel with it it.

What IT means.

THIS.

What THIS all means.

Meaning – and the absence of meaning.

The glorious, never-ending, futile, wonderful search for meaning and our compulsion to look forward when it, this, the answers are here now.

But they aren’t here now at all. They are elusive, or we would find already and stop searching.

The continual paradox of apparent meaninglessness coupled with our insatiable desire for meaning.

The Yin and Yang play-off of ‘Meaningless Life’ and ‘Awareness’.

What THIS feels like – and the validity of this experience.

This is what Rebel Zen means to me – if it must be defined – that we live, impermanently, meaninglessly, and that – surely – THIS is okay…

…but somehow it’s not,

….but somehow it is,

…and on and on without resolution …

Without resolution but with an aching wonder, a beauty, a Love…

… a dream.

…. a dream framed by razors and barbed wire

… and then framed again with clouds of forgiveness and Love …

… and on and on and on without resolution.

Until … ?

Yes … I bloody LOVE it … Rebel Zen … is

The Glorious Art of Being Imperfect

By Seamus Anthony

A long time ago in another head space, I wrote the the following:

“Everything is Appropriate

“Just as above you is the Macrocosm, a massive spiralling universe, far too huge to even idly comprehend, so too within you is a microcosm. This microcosm reaches and descends within you to the most finite level, and then beyond measurement. On top of this, every other ‘cosm’ of whatever size or description (a hair, another person, a distant star) has it’s own microcosm descending within, and it’s own perspective on the macrocosm in which it is suspended.

“So it is obvious from this that the concerns of a single human individual do not count for much at all. Yes, that’s right. The often harrowing emotional pain and terrible physical misfortunes that eventually befall all humans to some degree, mean not a blip to the massive universe as a whole. And then, to really push the point, if these issues are so insignificant in comparison to the universe that we know, consider then their significance in the larger macrocosms that our universe must surely be a minute part of…And so on……

“If I were to put a skewer in your eye right now, you would not be very impressed at all. You would, from your perspective, consider my actions to be both ‘wrong’ and ‘bad’. Wrong in that it seems right to you that I should leave your eye in peace rather than in pain; and Bad in that having both eyes in working order is a situation that you see as being ‘Good’(i.e. useful and not painful). But, in reality, all of these events are only true to the universe in terms of energy exchange. All things are comprised of the single component – Energy. All matter is understood to be comprised of pure energy moving around perpetually in an infinite dance. Maintaining a balance; Yin attracted to Yang; and all in abhorrence of a vacuum.

“So, in terms of the Universe, or more accurately the Tao (the Unknowable Hugeness of All Things), when some unfortunate human being’s eye gets poked out by some skewer wielding freak, all that happens is that an amount of configured energy gets moved around. Arm energy moves skewer energy towards and into eyeball energy, eyeball energy falls out. Eye socket energy bleeds a lot and the vacuum left by the removed eyeball gets quickly filled up with air energy. TO THE TAO THIS IS NOT A MORAL ISSUE. This is why ‘God lets bad things happen to good people’.

“On the positive side, this is why you have the opportunity to free yourself from the mental traps of your social conditioning. Not that this is always an easy thing to do. Obviously most people never do. When your car breaks down and your back hurts and it’s hot and you’re going to be late for work and your boyfriend just left you all in the same day, it can sure make you feel like the whole universe is against you. But it’s not…The Universe is impartial. To the Tao, things simply are what they are, no more. No morality, no expectations, no judgment. So if, when under duress, you remind yourself of this (perhaps after a nice healthy tantrum), you can automatically relax. You are able to relax because you realize that none of it really matters, and that no preconceived idea you have about life is verifiable, and that the way your society taught you to respond to situations is completely arbitrary. Therefore you can, theoretically(!), choose to be happy at any given moment.

“No matter what your current personal circumstances, it is important to remember that in an impartial universe, all things are exactly as they are meant to be at any given moment. If you doubt this, then observe nature; is the Tiger remorseful for killing the gentle Deer? Never.”

But What About Karma?

I also posted this essay over at TaoBums, and underneath it you will see a comment asking where Karma comes into all of this.

And what a good question!

I used to take a hard-line stance against what I saw as woolly concepts such as Karma.

Maybe I’m going soft, but these days I am much more open to concepts like ‘God’ as opposed to simply ‘Tao’, ‘Karma’ as opposed to ‘Randomness’, and potentially even the continuation of the soul after death as opposed to simple energetic reintegration into the whole.

This is in fact one of the reasons I coined the term Rebel Zen, because I found myself needing to rebel against my initial rebellious stance, if that makes sense, in order to return to a more balanced position.

To explain more clearly: I grew up in a Christian home, talking each night to God and worrying about “Sin”.

Then, in my late teens, I swung to extreme hedonism.

Then I went back to spirituality, but found myself attracted to a hardcore Taoist outlook. To me this meant no God, no woo-woo fluff, just an unfathomable mystery and cruel, hard Nature.

But then during a terrifyingly shaky flight through a storm over the Himalayas I found myself silently crying out to God to forgive me should I die. Safely back on the ground, I couldn’t just put it down to fear, knew I had to re-address my core beliefs. Since then I have re-adjusted my stance to one of fuzzy (if mystified) openness to the “woo-woo fluff” I once rejected. That’s what I meant about rebelling against my own rebellion.

But then other times I just see this as sentimental poppy-cock fabricated by my fear-ridden ego.

What do you think?

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By Seamus Anthony Ennis

It’s just my opinion, and I have no idea what I am talking about, but you – yes, you – have absolutely no clue what the hell is going on.

Yes, you heard me, and that goes for your guru, coach, expert or teacher also.

You see, sometimes when I am at barbecues, beer comfortably resting on my belly, paper plate piled high on my knee, the subject comes up that I write personal development articles and, for better or worse, I cringe. Why? Because the first thing that happens, at least in my mind, is that people look at me and think “Well, what the hell does he know that I don’t? He’s no guru; look at that blob of mayonnaise on his beard! And isn’t that the guy who drank a couple too many at Jo’s party last fortnight and made a fool of himself? Personal development writer indeed – hmmph!”

And the truth is they are right. I don’t know diddly. But neither do ‘they’ and neither, my friend, do you.

You might have chosen to believe certain things, and these beliefs are most likely an integral part of your sense of personal identity. In fact they are probably very useful in keeping you from just collapsing under the weight of a total existential breakdown, but nevertheless…

You. Don’t. Know. Anything. About. Anything.

Believing something is not the same as knowing something. One is a choice, the other is a certainty, and in this life there are no certainties.

Everything you think you know is all just your own unique perspective and is completely unprovable as ultimate truth.

I once saw that great, mad, rambling comic Billy Connolly expound his view on this. Minus a few expletives, he said:

“We are part of something enormous that’s too big for us too understand. … We’ve been looking through the wrong end of the telescope for God … See those wee things that live in ponds … they don’t have a clue that we exist, because we’re too big for them … Well, there’s something too huge for us. We’re the leg of a chair. We’re a cup of tea. We’re something dead simple.”

In other words we just see this little circle of possibility that just doesn’t give us a particularly insightful view of the big picture whatsoever. We are too big for the little water bugs to comprehend, and that, my little insect friends, is our lot too. If you’ve ever seen that email that goes around comparing the relative size of the planets to each other and then to the sun, and then our sun to the other even bigger suns out there until planet Earth is so little it can’t even be seen on the computer screen anymore, then you’ll know what Billy means. We are so, so tiny in the grand scheme of things that we are conceited to think that we will ever understand our Universe …

… and herein lies our freedom.

(”Everybody! Follow me!” screams Connolly, doing a Nazi salute and marching off, “We’ll come back for your valuables later!”)

But seriously, given that you will soon be dead, and given that you can’t be expected to understand God or the big picture, there is simply no good reason why you shouldn’t dream ‘big’ (which will always be comparatively small) and, to reclaim a corporately-hijacked cliché, just do it.

I Don’t Know What I’m Talking About

I don’t know what I’m talking about of course, but in my opinion our mission is to help to raise the vibration of the universe just a little bit. To make a positive contribution. Now, this contribution, even if you became the single most important human being in the history of the world, will by default always be tiny in the grand scheme of things, but in the earthly context of this and subsequent generations, you can help to make our world a better place, and this can bring you (and others) happiness.

Far be it for me to bark orders, but there’s no point trying to understand the Universe, because that is a waste of time, and there’s no point wasting our lives chasing security, because there simply is no security. Soon, very soon, you will be dead and whatever happens after that is anybody’s guess. So be free. Do what you want. Dream a dream and have a go. Sure you’ll need to consider practicalities, and you’ll need to decide whether or not you really do actually want the pressure and risk that comes with being a working astronaut or high-wire trapeze artist, but don’t let others put you off by telling you what-is-what, because those people, be they priest, parent, spouse, whoever, have absolutely no clue – and neither do you.

If you ponder it long enough, I hope you will see the ultimate freedom that lies in this fact: No matter how hard you peer up above you, you will never really know what the heck is actually going in outside of your little muddy puddle, so you are free do what you feel.

My only sub-clause is this: The one apparently apparent fact in this life is that doing good is infinitely more satisfying for any sane person than doing evil. So please don’t use this article as an excuse to do something horrible. After all, it’s not like I have the foggiest idea what I am on about.

Now if you’ll excuse me I have to go and find a napkin to wipe the mayonnaise – and forty seven thousand, three hundred and eighty nine tiny doomed critters – off my beard. Good day to you.

This article was first published in print in Living Now Publishing’s DaretoDream magazine (March 2008, Australia)