DOTTING THE VOID

That’s because we’ve somehow got this extravaganza called mind, he said.

Look at the cats, dogs, animals, how they are content with what they get. Always in the moment.

We, on the other hand, are pretty clueless about what to do with that infinitely (and unnecessarily) complex machinery in our skulls.

Unable to turn itself off, it’s continually there. Endlessly producing anxieties, hopes, passions, thoughts.

If you’d strip the process down to its essence though, you’d see that all this is nothing but kind of a connect-the-dots game. Similar to the constellations we define in the night sky. Just as we cannot bear the void we cannot stand still.

We are connecting the dots creatively at times. Take Newton and his apple, for instance. Skipping all the other possibilities he drew a connection between the fallen fruit and gravity. Or arts, for that matter. But most of the time the void is filled with conflicting ideas. Religion. Ideologies. World views. Culture. My way of connecting the dots is superior! Truer!

And how childish is the mind in its pretense. Restless. Jumpy. Like a spoiled kid. Distract me. Entertain me. Approve me. Mirror me. Love me (and do it in MY way!).

Then he smiled gently and swam away leaving me behind, smiling, as well.

Seeing through phenomena and looking for the essence of things is liberating, isn’t it?

*

Sitting on the verandah, I’m watching the swift procession of the wonderful rain clouds.

Their continual formation, shape shifting, dissolution and filtering the light in varying shades offer yet another analogy for the mind with our passing attachments and detachments.

He hadn’t used the word mind, in fact. For him, it’s simply “the human brain” with all its odd byproducts, mind being just one of them.

I go one step (or a dot shall I say?) further and start to think about consciousness, the timeless counterpart of the childish mind. Where the one is time-bound, non temporal is the other. Non dualistic, unifying what the mind divides. Encompassing. Equanimous.

The sky beyond the clouds and the void itself beyond the sky.

Womb of insight.